Sink or Swim

Sink or Swim (Or how Jill Valentine got her groove back)
Wesker had probably wanted to turn her into Tyrant, watch her rip her former friends apart... but the latent vaccines and her prior exposure to some strains more unstable than the base T-Virus led to complications. He'd scrambled to stabilize the situation, and his warped genius had even been successful. In the end she should be thankful, the T-Abyss's regenerative properties were the only reason she'd survived Chris's surgery by pistol. Though the worst of it was, when she thought back she wasn't even sure she was as mad about the unwanted change as what had come before.
At least now she looked like as much of a monster as being Wesker's minion had made her feel...

Chapter 1: Prologue

Chapter Text

Nine Months Ago

Eastern Slav Republic

It started with the sound of screaming. Not of people, that had come later, but of rockets falling from on high. Whistling through the air and detonating in the woods nearby. The forest engulfed in flames and foul smelling smoke, heavy with metals that weighed in their lungs even as they ran.

Odet had been expecting this of course. The civil war had gone hot again, though they’d hoped there would be more time before Southern forces rolled over them. The Liberation Army had taken the oil fields and with the threat of their destruction there’d been little to no use of artillery or airstrikes for the last few weeks. Men and supplies had moved through their small village by the truckload, but it had looked at first like they might actually come to a more peaceful resolution than the last time when NATO and Russian forces had simultaneously intervened in the capital.

A fool’s hope, but she’d been a fool for some time. Her uncle, her brother, and even her sister had ran off one by one while she had stayed put. Hearing nothing from them, only rumors of the tragic slaughter which had taken place in the capital a few short years ago before the old regime had been ousted. It hadn’t taken long for things to descend into the same problems as before, the new leadership pulled from the surviving military leaders which had moved to position themselves as reasonable figures during the transition of power after the West pulled out once more and Russian forces retreated, secure that the oil fields were running once more as efficiently as desired.

It was the only thing anyone seemed to care about here.

So they ran, from the flames now burning through the trees near their homes, towards the military positions near the oil fields, too close for bombs and rockets to be safely used without risking hitting the pipes themselves.

They’d almost made it when she heard the screaming again.

Only this time it wasn’t rockets. The soldiers were screaming. Wild and panicked, voices raw with a terror that made her halt even as others still moved forward. In the fading sunlight ahead she saw shadows moving, low to the ground and hunched over. Rising up as the first of the villagers drew near. Deep, guttural and animalistic sounds issued forth from the bloody mutated form of one as the half-eaten body of what had looked like a dead man rose up and stumbled forward. Elsewhere she saw their own soldiers, moving with awkward and stiff actions, taking aim towards the crowd and-

Odet ducked down as the machine gun roared to life. Covering her head and shaking in the muddy ditch. The creature’s own sounds added to the cacophony and silenced her cries and prayers.

She didn’t dare move, even as the bodies began to pile about her. Even as one of those beasts came past, sniffing along the otherside of the road. Odet only pulled closer, letting the mud cover her in the hopes that she would be overlooked as the walking dead, guns still haphazardly aimed at the very people they had sworn to protect before, moved past her and into the village. The sounds of gunfire and further cries of alarm fading into the distance as they passed.

By the time she dared move again the sun had fully set, the hills in the distance shrouded in a dying red light while those behind her filled the air with smoke from the initial rocket strike. It made sense now, as perverse and monstrous as it was.

They’d missed on purpose, distracting people and forcing others to move towards where they’d thought they’d be safe. Only to have already infected the soldiers at the oil field so as to-

“Oh god… they’re killing all of them.” This wasn’t military action, it was a slaughter. She had to do something… find some help. Get on the radio and call…

Who?

The use of such creatures had been forbidden since that incident in the capital, but that hadn’t stopped whoever was behind this attack. Cell towers and phone lines had been blown up over the last weeks, and even if she could find a working radio, who would she even call? Their enemies down by the capital to tell them that they were being eaten by zombies? Even if she got through, would they believe her?

Would they come even if they did?

No. She needed to move. Run away from the attack. Hide till it burned out and hope to be found afterwards. She might be a decent shot with an old army rifle, but these things took more than that to put down. Her mind made up, Odet walked towards the now silent outpost, daring not to look at the bodies strewn about on the ground. Too torn up to move even if whatever unnatural force possessed some of them had been present. She was thankful for that, even if the rancid smell of blood and gunpowder hung heavy in the air as she passed. Happy indeed when she found the commander’s tent and something to block out the sight and scent around her.

Though it was not unoccupied. The commander was still there.

Tied to a chair, strange black bile dripping from his jaw and eyes bloodshot so much they seemed to almost glow in the darkness. She clutched at her mouth to strangle a scream as he lunged forward. Halted by the zipties which had secured him to a post on one side. No sense of self or sanity remained, only a wild and murderous intent focused on her. Though by the looks of it he’d suffered before his infection, injuries not self-inflected by his current state easily seen.

“What happened here…”

Her question seemed to be answered soon as she heard the sound of boots on loose gravel over the growling of the now former commander. Odet saw the crates to one side, some opened and others still nailed shut and bolted towards them. Ducked low and daring only to peep through the cracks in the wood as the tent parted once more.

And a pair entered.

One man and one woman, clad in black and gray fatigues. Faces covered and bedecked in weaponry that looked a good deal more expensive than what either the Liberation Army or their foes down in the capital could afford to muster. Her questions only deepened when one spoke to the other.

“Can’t believe you forgot to let this one out with the rest, Carter.”

“Stuff it Bravo,” the woman bit back, pulling her facemask down and her goggles up. Revealing short brunette hair and a pale complexion that fit with both her accent and language. “And use codenames for fucks sake.”

“Americans?”

“Why? There’s no one left here but brain dead zombies like these and the controlled BOWs we sent out with them.”

“It’s called professionalism.”

“Yeah, and if we were fighting a real army and not playing cleanup for Leviathan Chemicals so these asshole rebels would stop squatting on the pipeline maybe you’d have a point.”

“Whatever,” Carter said as she cut the commander loose. Who dropped to the floor before standing up, arms outstretched and jaw unhinging as something long and wriggling stuck out of him and in a mass of tentacles tried to engulf the woman that had set him loose.

Only for her eyes to glow blood red in the darkness as he slowly came to a stop, standing there as if frozen before her gaze.

“At least these things they gave us make it quick and easy. Hell, we didn’t even have to take a shot once we got in here and infected the lot of them.”

“Almost feels too easy,” the man said. “When I was in Iraq-”

“Oh god, just shut up Bravo. I have had it up to here with your machismo war stories.” She turned and pointed and her compatriot, the zombie forgotten for the moment as they argued. Which took the opportunity to turn towards her hiding spot.

Odet’s heart leapt into her chest as the former commander moved closer and closer. She pushed back, coming towards the edge of the tent as he lunged against the crates, causing the open lid of one to fall over and onto the ground.

“Seems like he found something.”

Odet didn’t bother to wait, crawling out from under the edge of the tent and sprinting in a mad dash into the oil field. The pumps, still off, standing about her and casting long shadows in the deepening darkness as the last glimmers of sunlight faded. She couldn’t hear anything over the pounding of her heart, simply driven by blind panic to run as far and as fast as she could from what was chasing her. Worse than the monsters made of men, worse than the living dead which had been her friends and comrades only a few short hours ago.

The monsters wearing the flesh of men and women, come to her quiet corner of the world to bring such death and devastation. All thoughts save fleeing had left her, all plans from before abandoned in the face of such depravity and evil. She knew that there was no hope of mercy from those behind her, only the faint and fleeting possibility that they might miss her if she could run far and fast enough.

The howl of dogs, or something worse, set that hope to rest. And she tripped and fell. Rolling down the hill, through a broken section of the fence that had separated the oil fields from the road. In the distance as she crawled out of the mud Odet saw the flames and smoke from her village. And figures walking towards her out of the darkness.

Slow and steady, without the halting wrongness of the rest. Eyes aflame like demons from hell.

And behind them a legion of nightmares leaped from the shadows.

------

Now

“An investigation continues into the bioterrorist attack near the Leviathan Chemicals Oil Field in the Eastern Slav Republic. On site verification of BOWs has been determined by the BSAA and independent investigators, though the specific strains are yet to be determined.”

“The total death count is still unknown, though estimates place it over two thousand in the region dead or infected. The vector for the spread appears to be yet another variation of the Plagas which has become the bio-weapon most commonly used after variations of the T-virus.”

“Ashley Graham gave a public announcement that she and the US division of the BSAA would make another effort to have the viral inhibitor treatment approved. Last year it narrowly failed in the EU by-”

She shut the television off, leaning back into her bed and trying to ignore the odd sounds it made as her limbs shifted. Her weight hadn’t changed that much, comparatively. Hell, if Wesker’s insane plan had worked it certainly would have. But then he’d always thought he was smarter than he actually was and in her particular case it had caught up to him.

Jill still wasn’t quite sure what he’d planned, her memories during those years of mind controlled obedience thankfully foggy most of the time. Clarity had come back when he’d decided to alter her injections, using an immune system suppressant to make her open to infection to the original progenitor viruses so he could, in his words, “Make a proper impression when Chris arrived.”

She’d still been too out of it to tell him wear to stick it when the needles came out, but whatever plan he’d had to make her into some hulking abomination to murder or be murdered by Chris Redfield had failed spectacularly when it turned out that the most recent infection she’d received was faster on the draw then even Wesker had anticipated. The T-Abyss had ran rampant within days of his modified treatment and Jill’s last memories of a normal human existence were of Wesker looking oddly panicked ( good ) and that idiot fangirl Excella’s sharpening look of disgust at what she was becoming (that was less pleasant to remember).

When her vision had faded away, eyes vanishing as her flesh grew over them she’d actually been thankful for the solitude. Sounds and scents became muted as her body mutated within darkness. Until she started to see again.

Through her skin. Her new eyes jet black orbs, far too sensitive, but thankfully sharp enough that nothing had been lost there. Then with time sound and smells had come back too, some parts sharper. Far too clear, as the way she’d licked the air when she’d been let loose again, the P30 replaced upon her chest and kept her compliant and blissfully unaware of how much she’d changed.

Till Chris had yanked it off and she’d awoken at last.

Clawed, tailed, and looking more like a walking shark than a woman. Though given how mercifully humanoid most T-Abyss variations had been and her own cocktail of viral inhibitors even after Wesker had idiotically decided to repress her immune system after all the things she’d been in contact with, Jill had to secretly wonder if she’d lucked out.

She was alive after all?

Wesker standing over another man, watching as he writhed on the ground and screamed. Veins bulged out as the infection took over. She didn’t look away as she couldn’t look away as she’d been told to observe and-

She sank further into the bed, covering her head with sheets, trying not to think of how many atrocities she’d been part of, those she remembered and those she thankfully did not. If anything this… had at least put an end to that, her body too mutated for Wesker to send her out to do his bidding or to follow him outside of the lab when he committed yet another unspeakable act of bioterrorism as part of his mad agenda.

Jill hadn’t told anyone, least of all Chris or the therapist the BSAA had managed to dig up and who hadn’t gone running when they’d seen her, but part of her wondered if this was just her punishment for all the death and destruction she’d failed to stop, and then became an unwilling participant in. As awful as her state now was…

At least she could properly mourn those deaths she’d born silent witness to, standing beside Wesker as he-

She grabbed at the remote control, her three clawed hand almost breaking it as she turned the sound back on. Hoping to drown out her thoughts, if only for a moment, with anything else.

Chapter 2: Chapter 1

Summary:

Jill's daily life, in both painful memories that won't stay beneath the waves...
And the hope for a better, or at least more interesting, tomorrow.

Chapter Text

Chapter I

The water ran cold upon her body. She’d been in the shower too long, trying to scrub away the blood and memories. It wouldn’t work.

It never worked.

All those bodies, all those she failed to save in the Mansion, in Raccoon, in-

She was still in Raccoon? The idea seemed odd, unreal, but it was her shower in her apartment. The same cracked tiles on the floor from where she’d dropped her armored vest by accident, her toothbrush exactly where she’d left it next to the sink. The familiarity was tinged with an odd sense of longing…

And contempt.

How could she endure such normality, such domestic simplicity after seeing such horrors? How could she accept all those that had told her that “It hadn’t happened like that” or “You must have been mistaken Jill”-

“Jill, are you fully accepting what’s happened to you?”

-stupid things like that. Of course she knew what happened! This wasn’t denial, far from it. She was the one alive, the survivor, the Witness , she couldn’t deny what had happened even if she wanted to.

God, how she wanted to.

But then what, just forget them, all those that she couldn’t save, all those that had died because she wasn’t fast or strong or smart enough to see through Wesker’s bullshit in time? Had led them into a trap and-

- gotten herself captured, almost kill her partner before-

She turned the water off, stepping out of the shower, ignoring how her toes curled on the cold tiles of the floor, the slight scratching sound of her nails on the floor as she-

Jill shook her head, feeling her wet hair sway as she did, putting her hands on the sides of the bathroom counter and looking down into the sink. Remembering those nights she’d been awoken from another nightmare, rushing into here and emptying her stomach of leftover pizza and sleeping pills that never seemed to work. She winced, feeling a tension in the core of her being, her stomach rumbling beneath the towel she’d tossed on after she’d stepped out of the shower. She felt hungry.

The smell of blood, of flesh and death assaulted her senses as she kicked open the door-

The memory only made the pain come back, harder. Stabbing into her gut as her hands tightened onto the countertop. She felt her shoulders shift, a crick in her back popping as the towel pushed back, pulled by some strange force as if another limb tugged it up.

Before it fell off, the movement of her back fin caused it to pool about her waist.

Jill shuddered, air sucked through her gills as the cooling moisture moved through lungs that were stronger, stranger, different than they should be but now her own. She tried to gasp, but something kept her jaw shut, air instead exhaled through the tip of her noistral… and the sides.

She shook her head, trying to disperse the strange sensations, only for the phantom feeling of hair she no longer had to fade away as her hands- claws pressed down tighter and the counter broke apart. She cried out, a low and rumbling growl as the fleshy armor of her face started to peel back. She felt the hardened extremity of her jaw snapping out, nostrils inhaling the scents more clearly as her body shook. Her tail lashing backwards, catching onto the shower curtain and pulling it down behind her in a clatter of metal. It was long, too long for her on land, awkwardly dragging behind her, yet another reminder of what she’d lost.

Of what she’d become.

Jill felt her face reveal more clearly, the second eyelids blinking as the haze of thin membranous flesh parted and she looked into the fogged over mirror. Rising a webbed hand, three long fingers capped by wickedly inhuman claws, and dragged it over. Revealing her expressionless visage in all its horror.

Almost bone white flesh, extending from the deeper blue covering that spread down and across her back. The shift in tones clearly meant to resemble a shark. Her belly a slightly less pale white. Nudity revealed more remaining features than she’d have expected, but then poor Rachel and still looked like a woman for the most part.

Till her head split open and something like lamprey eel pushed out of her twisted skull.

Her jaw opened, the sharpened teeth showing as she sucked in air, her gills flexing along her neck. The scent of blood overpowering her. Covering her hands. All those she’d failed. A city burned because she wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t smart enough, couldn’t convince anyone to believe her until it was too late.

And then so many more, murdered at the beck and call of a mad man.

She dragged them across her body, feeling claws against her flesh. Wanting to rip and tear it away, to bring back the woman she had been.

But then she had already been a monster, hadn’t she? Now at least it showed on the outside. Now no one would ever make the mistake of putting their trust in-

------

She pushed her head out from under the blankets of her bed, feeling her claws poking through part of it once more. An irritated gutteral sound came from her throat as she saw the time on the alarm clock and pulled it over her head once more.

“What’s the word for a nightmare you never wake up from?” Not that it mattered. She had something almost as bad as BOW medical examinations to look forward to today.

A mission briefing.

Jill had been adamant on her desire to do something useful, especially since being a guinea pig in a lab did little good anymore now that Wesker’s experimentation meant that her immunity to several viral strains was no longer easily or safely used on anyone else. Any future miracle cures synthesized from her blood had risk factor for ending up looking like undersea predator from outer space going by what the scientists had said, even if her body had managed to purge that active portions of the T-Abyss once the P30 had been removed fully and the last of Wesker’s immune system suppressants had worn off.

Given that her skills had always been better suited towards field work than administration she’d requested reassignment. Hopefully back into Chris’s team, someone that knew her from before and thus would trust her even as she now was. Unfortunately the European BSAA branch had been positively paranoid as of late, perhaps because of all the outbreaks they’d barely managed to contain let alone properly investigate. They hadn’t even been the ones to take down those bioterror war criminals from earlier in the year.

The mercenaries that had unleashed BOWs in the Eastern Slav republic eliminated by a series of airstrikes the Russians had done. Probably more to get rid of competitors to their own bioweapons at this point, as the fact that not every Tyrant was an Ex-Umbrella popsicles someone had bought and defrosted was now almost an open secret among their business.

It was screw ups like that which had led to Jill finally being given a chance to prove herself in the field once again.

She just had to get ready for it.

She glanced towards the clock one more time, her jaw moving slightly as her double eyelids blinked at the morning light. Even through the blinds it felt painfully bright. Thankfully she could adjust to brighter environments, but even now she was pretty sure she remembered Wesker cursing under his breath about how “Ill suited” she’d become to being his perfect little assassin in the African savannahs.

Her jaw shifted slightly, not really a smile, but about as close as she could manage.

Thoughts of Wesker’s failure, death by incineration, and one or two more pleasant dreams where she’d broken his control after he’d changed her and ripped him to shreds comforted her as she dressed that morning. Shoes and socks were out of the picture for obvious reasons. Nothing would fit and nothing was needed. The tail also got in the way of most other clothes. Some rather heavily modified undergarments and cargo shorts fit for the most part, a belt handling some issues that her tail had created. The shirt was a harder fit, having needed even more extreme alterations and always a bit of an effort to get over her head.

Frankly, if she’d felt daring enough to confront the BSAA with her new body so boldly, she’d probably have had an easier time with tubetop. But that outfit had been incinerated along with Raccoon City, and the replacement was probably stored in whatever box her belongings had ended up in during those long years as Wesker’s slave.

Sometimes she considered getting a hat or some kind of hoodie, but even with that news about SBOW rights and laws changing back in the US, most of Europe remained far stricter about the matter. Hardly surprising given how there’d been almost five incidents as bad as Raccoon City in the last decade alone.

Jill took one last look at the clock, her inky black eyes blinking as she turned away and walked towards the door. She was almost late at this point. And while technically the door wasn’t locked Chris had told her that there were more cameras and sensors pointed at her than even she’d noticed.

Not that she minded.

It only made sense to keep an eye on something like her.

------

“Agent Valentine, glad you could make it.”

Jill nodded. She could talk, finally, after months of speech therapy. That her voice had quickly gone from a scratchy growl to an almost perfect mimicry of what it had been should have made her feel better about it. Till she started to notice how she talked.

It wasn’t normal.

It felt like the surgeries and training had caused her body to regenerate an emulation of speech and not how she used to talk, the sounds coming deeper in her throat, her tongue moving oddly as she relearned how her altered anatomy worked. Part of her wished she could compare it to someone else like her, but there wasn't really anyone like that? Even Ashley Graham hadn’t been so unique to start with, and with the use of viral inhibitors in the US as a new treatment she was starting to become less so more and more. Obviously the hope of most medical professionals was for a real cure to irregular mutations like theirs, but in extreme cases it was really a question of what was preferred.

Inhumanity or death.

At one point she’d have gladly taken death. Not now.

Death would be too easy, a cowards surrender after all she’d been through. She hadn’t told anyone that, save Chris in those first few weeks when she’d spoken in strange growls and communicated by awkwardly writing on whiteboards. He’d been afraid she’d do something drastic.

She’d only had one question she’d asked again and again.

“Why?”

They’d made a promise, and it seemed in retrospect that Chris had failed to deliver. Even if she wasn’t going to make do on correcting that mistake, it still galled her. They’d sworn to one another that if one was infected, the other would… handle it .

In the end he’d only been able to say he’d seen something in her that made him believe there was still hope. Jill had spent hours looking at her face, her new face trying to see it.

She didn’t know what he saw.

The kind of sentimental foolishness that would have gotten him killed if Wesker hadn’t been such a fuckup in the end.

Quint Brady had none of that at least. The man looked at her with well hidden sense of disgust, professionalism winning out over the primate terror of being close to something that had been created from too many evolutionary nightmares mixed together. Even then she could smell the slight increase in sweat in the air, another little oddity that would have bothered her more if her nightmares about hungering for the blood of humans had been based in more truth than her own twisted fears. Quint Brady had little to fear from her.

That ham sandwich she’d seen in the cafeteria the day before was counting down the minutes before it fell to a sudden Jill attack.

He seated himself in a nearby chair while Jill stood slightly further and to the side. Close enough that her attention to the BSAA presenter was clear but not so close that she was a looming shark mouthed shadow over their shoulder. She’d grown taller after all, though not yet level with Chris’s eyes.

“Odd. I swore he used to only be a bit taller than me.” She’d have to ask him about that when he came back from the States. Maybe he’d taken to wearing a different brand of boots or something?

“Glad you could make it as well Ms. Valentine.” The absence of her prior role did not go unnoticed, but she didn’t comment on it. She wasn’t technically an agent. Not till they re-activated her commission, as most branches of the BSAA had declared her as dead even if Chris had never given up hope. Hell, most still considered her dead. Not like there were fingerprints or dental records to say otherwise anymore.

“We’re looking into an unexpected ABS issue.”

“The anomalous biological sample was found along the coast of Norway. At first we weren’t certain, but further sightings were detected and we’ve since put a broad ban on fish taken from over a two hundred and fifty kilometer region.”

The projector flipped over, showing a Cod, then another with its jaw open. Tongue sticking out, and splitting apart into a web of strange reddish tendrils. Another, eyes burst open and leaking pustules while another, even more mutated, had lost those same eyes, the featureless flesh now marked with strange new growths that bloated its body.

“As Agent Grady said, we’ve locked down the region but still have no confirmed source. The fish are heavily mutated, but active vectors are indeterminate. Is it a chemical effect? A new viral strain? Some kind of parasitic infection? All we know is that the currents are spreading it southward and we need to find and terminate the source before we have to shut down all fishing in the North Atlantic.”

Jill cocked her head to the side, the unvoiced thought loudly echoing in her mind. This was too good. Given her body’s new… abilities, an investigation into a possible aquatic bioterror incident was almost insultingly ironic. But then it did fit with the tight leash that the European BSAA had been holding when it came to her requests for work so far. Anything that put her as a public face had been off the table, anything that put her on point to possible encounter BOW had been vetoed. Hell, they seemed deeply conflicted about even re-issuing her a firearm, as if letting her carry again was some betrayal of their principles.

“Being the backup for Grady taking samples of dead fish fits with what they’d actually let me out to do.”

But anything was better than nothing, and nothing was all she’d done for almost a year. And despite Chris’s best efforts her legal un-personhood following her mutation and long MIA case had made getting her out of Europe something of a political minefield. One would think that saving the world from Albert Wesker would have counted for more, but apparently a lot of the upper level pencil pushers in Paris honestly thought the threat had been overblown. Probably why they’d been so hesitant to send their own forces down there and left Chris and Sheva to pretty much handle the whole situation on their own.

“So Valentine,” Agent Grady said, turning to look at her. His brown eyes met the jet black of her own. “You think you’re ready for another field assignment.”

She nodded, given an awkwardly clawed thumbs up as she spoke. “Sure. It’s just like riding a bicycle.”

“Besides, if I don’t prove myself out there I’ll just be stuck in places like this for the rest of my life.”

Chapter 3: Chapter 2

Summary:

Jill arrives at the scene of the investigation...
And soon it becomes a scene of a crime.

Chapter Text

After that the briefing was about as she’d expected. Tedious and tiring and making her wish there were still ways to communicate her irritation with it all that beyond opening her jaw entirely too wide and yawning, rows of razor teeth and tongue that now looked purple red tasting the air. Even showing her eyes unsettled some people, the inhuman frozen expression of predatory hunger that those black orbs imparted never failed to make them look away. Even ignoring how her multiple eyelids worked, Jill felt pretty confident that she wasn’t ever going to lose a staring contest from now on.

As they flipped back to an earlier slide, the geographic outline of the suspected infection range, Jill’s jaw shifted as the tension and irritation peaked. One of the sharper teeth, among many already quite sharp at that, pressed down onto her tongue and rewarded her with numbing pain and coppery taste. She sucked back, her hood slipping down as she did and by the time the taste of blood had begun to vanish that numbing sensation had already faded.

The… speed at which she regenerated now was somewhat disconcerting. It had never led to complications, even after enough blood had been drawn to probably equal her new body mass, but it nevertheless brought up unpleasant memories from before. The carrion smell of a dying city around her, as something impeccable and unkillable had hunted her through that urban tomb. So far the doctors had declared her physiology remarkably stable given the cocktail of drugs, vaccines, and viruses which had led to her transformation into this new state. But sometimes she still looked at her arms, slightly longer and definitely stronger, the thicker skin too white in places and covered in blue-black flesh that went down past her wrists, over her clawed hands and the three taloned digits there.

She’d had more before.

Not even as a normal, human woman, but at times when Wesker had been experimenting with his unexpected success. The variable regeneration of the T-Abyss was definitely there.

Sadly she’d had little success at using it, which led to her current problem.

Looking at an arsenal of weaponry provided by the BSAA and unable to figure out how she’d even use it. Most had trigger guards too small for her fingers to fit, the smaller and lighter pistols bad matches for most BOWs or aggressive vectors anyway. The solution had always been custom modifications and specialized ammunition, but in her case that didn’t solve the problem of how hard it would be to just use the damn things in the first place.

Umbrella had of course just Frankensteined a solution by just making everything bigger, as the oversized minigun and rocket launcher Nemesis had wielded against her had provided ample evidence of. Jill put the handguns down and looked over a selection of rifles that were as difficult, if not harder, to use with her current anatomy. She hefted one up, trying to find an angle that would support the rifle against her shoulder and let her look down the scope at the same time.

“This isn’t going to work,” she thought, hot air passing over her tongue and through the snout-like protrusion as she worked through reasonable ways to hold the weapon and rapidly moved to more unreasonable ways of the same. It was petty, minor, and on the whole rather absurd, but at the moment not being able to pass the STARS firearms proficiency test offended her more than the fact that she arguably didn’t have a face as far as most would judge.

Not that Agent Grady could tell. She’d spent more time around Chris than anyone else and even he could barely tell the difference between ‘Angry Jill’ and ‘Happy Jill’ now.

“They didn’t state you could carry anything that large, Agent Valentine.” He slid the extra clips of ammunition into his side holster for the submachine gun. Between that, the handgun, a flare pistol, and a standard issue combat knife he was kitted out for just about anything.

“I know. I’m just trying to figure out what I’m allowed to use that I actually can use.” While her facial features might have had issues, her voice was remarkably clear in communicating her annoyance. Grady shrugged, passing over the grenades and grabbing a set of waterproof emergency flares. Which he tossed over to Jill as he put two into his side pouch. “You could always take a knife.”

She waved her hand in front of herself, letting the sharpened tips of her fingers trail through the air. “I think I got that part covered.”

“Yeah, I guess you do. Honestly, we probably won’t find anything but dead fish. All this” Grady said, gesturing to himself, “Is overkill. How about we just keep it simple?”

He dropped the extra flairs and bio-sample kit on the bench next to Jill. All in all it was a frankly pathetic amount of gear, easily slung under one shoulder and barely even noticeable. Standing up once she was done she felt a sudden and strange sense of vulnerability at the lack of armament. Almost like one of those dreams where she’d forgotten to prepare for a speech and realized halfway through it she’d also forgotten to put on pants.

Which was particularly silly nowadays.

Even naked she was practically a biological killing machine, liable to walk off small arms and survive heavier calibers. With fangs and claws enough to gut anyone she got close to. About the only way she’d gotten less deadly was her tail, the awkward new limb a tad too long most of the time.

“Only Wesker could manage to make an aquatic predator in the middle of a desert.” Her jaw tightened briefly, thoughts of all those tiny towns and villages turned into empty graveyards. In truth there had been plenty of water for her to hunt in if he’d felt like using her like that.

It was one small, small mercy that despite the nightmares she’d never actually tasted the blood of anyone but herself, never used her claws or teeth beyond that time that she’d been ordered to attack Chris and Sheva.

“It could have been worse.” She always thought that at times like this.

Of course it could have been worse.

But that didn’t make this good.

—

The helicopter ride had been long, ample time to think. With her face pulled back into the protective covering of what had been her face before-

(A thought she tried not to think about, not like it was much better than the memories of her skin and muscles seeming to melt and bulge about her bones as they strained and grew too large for the woman she’d been and almost big enough for the creature she was to become.)

More of her body was hidden though, a rather haphazardly altered BSAA windbreaker pulled over her torso. Slits cut into the material to let some things through, while the hood comically failed to cover the inhuman shape of her skull sticking out from under it. Beneath that she’d put on an outfit that bore an uncanny resemblance to the old wetsuits she’d had in her last, at the time apparently successful, mission involving the T-Abyss. Problem solved, monster slayed, and a vaccine for another man made horror injected into her blood.

Only to find out years later that the beast she’d thought slain had only been wounded, circling just beneath the surface till the protection of her miraculous immune system had failed (been taken away).

It brought back bad memories, not that anyone at the BSAA knew or cared. They probably just thought it made sense. “You can breathe under water now? Sure, here’s a wetsuit so you have something to wear and don’t look like a disgusting naked mutant freak.”

Probably not in those words, but by now she was too numb to care about that. At least it fit, unlike most other things she’d been given to wear. She had no idea where Ashley Graham was getting clothes for someone with wings and insectile tail, but if she ever had the opportunity to talk to her it would be the first thing she asked.

At least this time there wasn't a mind controlling implant stuck on her chest, partially responsible for the chemical toxics which had unsettled her precarious biology and set her along the path to looking the way she did. If it weren’t for the size of her body and her limbs she’d probably still pass for normal. That it took a full body suit almost to hide enough of her skin for that to even be a possibility was just a statement of a fact now.

“No amount of gym memberships will ever get me a beach body again,” Jill thought, a slight and bitter laugh coming from her throat.

“Something funny Agent Valentine?”

She turned the mask of her face towards her current partner. Seeing him, if in shadows through the thin skin covering her eyes at the moment. Not as clear as normal, but hardly the blob of color one would have expected. Beneath the hood one of her eyelids blinked and the shape shifted slightly in clarity. Not a sensation she was ever going to get used to.

Or ever really wanted to get used to.

“Nothing really, just thinking about the past.”

“You had a lot of missions… before.”

Her head cocked to the side slightly as she shifted back. Grady had been with the European BSAA for years, most of it spent in the East in the various hot zones that broke out along and within ex Soviet States. She knew her career was (or had been, prior to all of this ) more notable, but there was no denying that anyone that had worked that region had seen their share of action and then some.

She’d been expecting this, sharing war stories and showing scars. Not that she had any of those now, everything from injuries at the mansion and what she’d gotten escaping Raccoon back to that little one on her thigh from a bike accident back when she’d been thirteen just as erased from her body as everything else. Her skin changed, her hair gone, her very genetic history erased as the body she’d possessed became raw materials for the creature she had become. She barely seemed to have a connection to the woman she’d been, save for memories that were more and more obviously colored by senses and experiences she didn’t even feel the same way anymore.

“Agent Valentine?”

She’d wandered off into her thoughts again. She shook her head slightly, her jaw stretching out as her face pushed out and revealed itself. Her voice clearer when she next spoke, “Sorry, I was just thinking about your question. Yeah, I had a number of missions.”

“Anything like this?”

“Like this-”

The mountains, shrouded in fog as they crashed down, cut off. Monsters after them, chasing them down like mere prey as they were driven into a slaughterhouse. Worse within than without, all from what should have been a simple investigation, cleaning up a few crime scenes and waiting for the CSI to show up and file a report.

Instead they’d been betrayed, though she hadn’t known at first how deep. Or how much Wesker’s obsession would cost her in the-

“No, not really. Most of the time it turned into a real horror show.” Jill patted the satchel at her side, running her clawed fingers over the biosample kit before she spoke again. “This will be a nice change of pace.”

------

The sun sank behind them and vanished utterly as they continued North. They wouldn’t see it again till the return trip. Or in two months. While the sea lanes in this region were reasonably open, strong currents keeping it free of ice just south of arctic covering, there was nothing but perpetual twilight ahead of them.

The landed finally, the small rocky island beach shrouded in darkness and illuminated by only the lights of the helicopter itself and the landing flares they’d fired down below them. Grady had departed first, performing a quick sweep of the area with night vision goggles pulled down. Jill followed, the fleshy covering that hid her full face pulling back as her eyes blinked before the darkness. Through the hood of skin she’d been almost blind in this low light, but as the bitter chill bit into the thinner muscle of her naked jaw her inky black eyes adjusted quickly and in desaturated grays and blacks the rocks and ice faded into view. She wasn’t sure if this qualified as true night vision, or just the absurd sensitivity of her vision now, but in either case there was nothing but a few hardy plants among the rising hills.

And the stench of dead fish, her jaw rising open and twisting into as much of a frown as her new musculature would allow.

“Looks like we picked the right spot,” Jill thought, grabbing onto two of the larger supply crates and pulling them behind her. She’d been voluntold to handle unloading the long-range helicopter that the BSAA used for these sorts of things, and to set up the temporary camp they would use for the initial inspection and selection of possible ABS cases. By the stench that surrounded her, she could tell already that the Hot Zone for this infection must have left evidence on the nearby beach. Just a matter of setting things up so they could have a comfortable place to work. Technically this should be performed by skilled specialists, but the European BSAA was understaffed and stretched thin as it was. Too many incidents of losing those same specialists by sending them into an infection zone before it could be cleared by agents like her had led to some changes in protocol. “Well, agents like I used to be.”

“Let’s get the tent set up over here, so the wind won’t be blowing in too hard if we have to be here longer than expected.” Jill nodded, pulling out one of the metal supports and stabbing it into the ground. The rocky ground resisted, but depressing a button along the side of the pneumatic system had it rocketing downwards and anchoring securely. Her uncovered foot, claws and all, pressed it firmly down as her weight kept it from moving up as this happened. Normally a job for two or more, but given her advantages in this matter she handled it all alone. One by one, till the supports were up and she began to wrap the plastic and cloth covering onto the walls.

While she continued her work, the two other specialists that had accompanied them disembarked. Already dressed head to toe in biohazard suits, the BSAA logo printed over the upper right of the chest. She didn’t even know what they looked like, both having been fully covered before even stepping onto the transport. She’d felt their stares on her the whole trip.

Obviously she’d been wrong about the level of disgust and fear that was coming from Agent Grady. While she couldn’t smell it from the two in the suits, it was obvious that they hadn’t had as many field deployments if they found her that hard to be around without staring constantly. The taller one, she thought might be a man but they hadn’t spoken so she was only guessing, had been moving their hand towards their pistol as they waited for the tent to be finished.

Jill wasn’t sure what good it would do them. Her skull had been uparmored in addition to pushing out into a maw of teeth, and while her muscles and flesh weren’t hard enough to stop bullets, her regeneration would more than make up for it. Sheva and Chris had unloaded a full clip into her each and all that had done was piss her off.

Grady had at least kitted himself out to handle something like her, half of his clips filled with armor piercing fragmentation rounds, BOW Killers , that would go through the tougher skin and muscles of most known irregular mutations before breaking apart and hampering un-natural regeneration. Get enough of those in her chest and she’d probably be down on the ground and coughing blood instead weathering the damage and watching the lead pop out of her skin as it knitted back together, even the scars of the bullet holes vanishing back into smooth white or bluish hide before her eyes.

Get a few through her skull and-

Well, they weren’t called BOW Killers for nothing.

She hefted the generator up as the small electric buggy pulled out the tiny trailer loaded with the last of supplies. The other biohazard suited BSAA specialist drove it around and parked in front of the tent as Jill sat down the generator and plugged it up to the cords leading into the shelter and the lights pointed out into the darkness unlit by the still smoking flares. With one strong tug it roared to life.

Just as the sound of the helicopter grew louder, lifting upward and away before swiftly returning to the landing pad on the coast they’d departed from. Not to return for at least eighteen hours, or until they called for an emergency evacuation. Which would still take some time to reach even then.

Plenty of time to finish this recon mission and get bored out of their heads.

She’d just have to keep busy until then.

------

“I’m not sure I heard you right,” Grady said, looking down at the dissected fish that was, in spite of having most of its organs either removed or rendered into reddish jelly, continued to wriggle on the metal tray in front of them. “It’s what?”

“Truly undead. Mutated yes, but in this case I think we can say it has even been properly re-animated.”

Jill had been wrong. The tall one had been a woman while the shorter tech was a man. He, a Dr. Krell, was nervously explaining what they’d found from the samples pulled up from the beach. Not hard to find, as the shore was heavy with fish carcasses when Grady and her had gone down to collect them.

Well, more Jill doing the collecting while Grady pointed a flashlight around and guarded them against nothing.

“Zombie Cod might be disgusting,” Jill thought. Taking another sniff, her snout stinging from the foul odor as her jaw tightened and nostrils shrunk. “Very disgusting, but that’s not going to be a danger to anyone with legs and a sense of smell anytime soon.”

“How is that different from normal zombies?”

“Agent Grady, normal zombies, or Aggressive Infection Vectors are just that,” the woman added, turning her still covered head from the wriggling fish carcass as she spoke. Agent Colman continuing, the slight Swedish accent coloring her words as she did, “they are the infected, still living yes, but changed. This truly died, all cellular function ceasing and killed by this unknown vector for contamination before reanimating again. Level of aggression, if any, still unknown of course.”

“How’d you miss this in the previous samples?”

They looked at Jill, where she sat on her haunches, tail laid flat across the cold ground even with the tiny space heater within the tent. Her body just a bit too tall to easily stand without bumping her head against the metal support beams. She looked from one to the other, her expression unreadable even as her jaw minutely shifted out of neutrality into a tighter clenched frown.

Or what her human mind thought of as that, even if it probably barely looked any different at all. Her eyelids, both sets, blinking twice while they looked at each other probably told more about how she was still waiting for their response.

“I share Agent Valentine’s concern,” Grady said at last, putting emphasis on the word, even if it was only a probationary recommission at the moment. “Shouldn’t we have noticed this from the samples back on the mainland?”

“Yes… that is very concerning. We saw the after effects, the mutations created by whatever this… is, but the infection itself had been completely purged by the time it reached the lab.”

Dr. Krell nodded, probably quite enthusiastically for it to show so clearly through the biohazard suit. “Yes! When we got them they seemed completely inert, lots of cellular damage and the genetic tracing a complete mess. But with the infection purged we couldn’t tell what we were dealing with.”

“We still can’t Krell, not till we get whatever this is sequenced.”

“Should we call for backup?”

This time there was no long pause, though it looked like the two specialists were about to speak first.

“No. I think we should stick to the plan Agent Valentine. I’ll head down towards the beach to secure the parameter while we get more samples prepared for more in depth inspection. No use running back before we get everything we came for.”

Krell and Colman shared a look, clearly not happy with a longer stay. Though Jill couldn’t fault the logic. This place was abandoned, too small to hide much of anything, and once they had a few more samples brought up they’d just hunker down around the generator and heater till their return flight landed.

For once a truly easy mission.

“Valentine, you take point outside of the camp for now,” Grady said. Probably more to give the two clearly unsettled techs some space then because he really thought they needed her patrolling area. She nodded, heading out and biting back sharp exhalation as the hard chill hit her lungs. Thankfully the hood kept the air from her gills and as the hood of flesh pulled down over her face she felt most of the cold vanish from her more sensitive extremities. Anything else was covered by the wetsuit, and her body was doing a remarkable job at dealing with the cold. Blood slowing down at the surface, a numbing tightness as the thicker hide of her body weathered the temperatures better than she ever could have before even in a full sub zero suit.

Her uncovered feet, webbed and clawed toes shifted the rocks as she moved around the tent. The lights were bright enough that she could ‘see’ slightly even with her face tucked in. Or see well enough not to trip. The area beyond the lights was a hazy black void at the moment, and all she could hear was the generator thrumming along nearby as she passed it. The radio at her side sprang to life, Grady’s voice clear through the short range walkie talkie.

“Agent Valentine, anything to report?”

“Nothing but rocks and cold.”

“Same. I found a few larger samples on the beach, I think one might be a sturgeon… or was. That should be enough.”

“Probably.”

“Look around for a secondary tent location. I think this operation might go on longer and we might as well prep for the next team.”

“Got it,” Jill said, lightly pressing down on the button on the side as she started walking towards the small trailer with the rest of their supplies on it. Reaching down to grab the second bundle of tent poles.

And paused, clawed hand halfway down as she noticed how the bundle it came in had already been ripped open, the metal shafts rolling free next to one of the extra gas tanks and-

Jill lurched forward, the thud of the impact reverberating through her whole body before she felt the pain. The spear tip penetrated into her back, through bone and cartilage like armoring and into the very core of her body. Her eyes widened beneath the hood as her jaws snapped out and a muted cry of pain issued out, blood and spittle flowing over her teeth. The prongs that anchored the poles expanded outward and shredded through something important. She fell against the side of the trailer, before rolling onto the ground, her action causing the tent pole to twist and yank down, a stabbing pain that made her vision swim red and black as she struggled to stand again.

The pain utterly swallowed her, her heart pounding and pounding and finally growing still…

And in the silence, just before she fell into an abyss of darkness she heard-

“This is Skadi… the primary target is down.”

Something else was said, echoing in that deepening darkness.

But Jill knew it not.

------

“Don’t you get tired of eating like that?”

Wesker looked up from his tray, the salad and protein shake combo disgustingly healthy to her eyes. She knew it wasn’t some vegan thing either, Wesker had proudly talked about the BLT he’d gotten from the same organic restaurant down from the station on one of his ‘cheat days’.

“A body is a temple Jill, and I make sure to worship mine.”

“God, half the time he’s a total nerd… and then he says weird stuff like that.” She honestly didn’t know how he’d ever gotten into this profession. Wesker just didn’t seem like he was the type to wear a uniform. Jill took a drink of water as she thought about it more. “Maybe STARS is just a holding position while he tries to get a job in forensics for some federal lab?”

Wesker was definitely smart enough for it, and she half suspected his specialty was less law enforcement than some kind of science. Even if he was the only person aside from Chris that was tying her shooting range score.

“You should treat yourself better you know,” Wesker said, taking a long drink of that disgustingly green and fruity-smelling protein shake he’d made. A strange smile coming over his lips as he looked down at her own tray before meeting her eyes with his own once more. “Someone like you deserves better than chum.”

Jill’s eyes widened as the smell of fish, raw and possibly just this side of rotten assaulted her senses. Her nostrils closed up even as she felt things push outward and-

No… no, this didn’t happen like-

-her face deforming, melting, reforming as bones snapped, teeth growing out as the old human ones fell out one by one by one-

I didn’t-stop. STOP!

-suddenly parting, her jaws pushing out, snapping open as she gasped, struggling to breath, struggling as she felt her heart still in her chest, a stabbing pain as it tried to beat but couldn’t, wouldn’t-

Wesker looked at her with concerned bemusement as he took a bite of his sandwich, seemingly uninterested in her body’s swift abandonment of anything and everything that remained of her humanity. More interested in the reddish blotch growing on her chest, more evident as her body stretched out, her STARS uniform soon ill fit to contain what she was to become.

“Jill, are you really going to just lie there and-”

------

Her claws dragged across the ground as she rose up, her entire body burning from a lack of oxygen. Her insides twisting, the half thump of her heart reverberating in the muted silence of her near death state. She felt her insides twist about the metal spike that had almost impaled through the organ. Missing by centimeters and then pulled down as she’d writhed along the ground. Twisting through the large veins leading below it, larger then normal and once shredded by the impalement. Regrown, but then torn again and again as she moved and tried to force her lifeblood to continue to flow even as it pooled internally in her chest cavity.

“Damn… damn it.” Jill managed to rise to a sitting crouch, reaching behind and tugging on the pole. Only to wince as the pain redoubled and her vision went black again.

No good.

The prongs had extended and her own body had tried to grow over the entrance wound. She wasn’t pulling it out, not like that.

So she’d have to go the other way.

Rising up, kneeling and part way standing she aimed the pole towards the grown. And fell back.

Her voice was keening roar of pain trailing into woman’s scream only at the end as the end speared out, blood spraying into the air as the tip protruded outward. She saw the metal teeth of the anchoring system before her as her head turned down. And her hand grasped around it.

Her claws.

She twisted and felt the metal bend.

She gripped harder and pulled, the tip breaking off and leaving only a sharpened tip.

Which sank back into her flesh as she rose, inch by painful inch till she stood. The end of the pole falling from her back. Only for her to collapse onto the ground, knees first, her tail lashing out behind her as her jaws opened wide. A torrent of blood and bile flowing out, her heart roaring back to life as the metallic invader that had kept her from properly regenerating had been removed at last. Within moments even the wounds on her front and back had closed up, only a slight dull ache where she’d been stabbed straight through. Even the reddish welt was fading into too pale white on the front and the bluish black on the opposite.

Jill took several deep breaths, the harsh cold welcomed after that numbing pain of catatonic injury. Only to turn sharply as her ears finally picked up the sound of the generator once more. She ran towards the front of the tent, pulling open the flap and-

“Damn it.”

Her voice was still hoarse and strained, but the clarity of her annoyance came through. Not that anyone was there to hear it. Both Krell and Colman were dead, their bodies laid out over their work. Krell had been torn open, wickedly cruel claws spilling blood and viscera across the ground. Colman had been luckier, or perhaps unluckier, to have only had her throat torn open. The blood spray painted the back of the tent where she had ran, but then fallen to the ground. Both their sidearms were out, several rounds spent in both.

No sign of what they had fought, though the radio looked smashed to pieces across the floor. The biosamples were missing too, not that it was easy to tell with the devastation that had happened within.

“Oh no.” Jill took off from the tent, towards the beach. Her eyes and jaw coming out as she ran, the muted darkness blossoming with more detail as her eyes adjusted. The smell of dead fish remained, along with new scents. Her own blood… and something else. She stopped at the edge of the island, looking around the shore. A new emergency flare had been dropped, the light illuminating the rotting and yet still twitching fish carcasses. That larger sturgeon that Grady had mentioned before.

And yet no sign of the man himself.

This was bad. Impossibly bad. Someone had attacked her, managed to almost kill her. Known how to do so even and-

“And then ripped apart the lab techs like a-”

“Shit.”

She’d heard someone speak… a woman? It had been strange, probably masked against the cold, but clearly speaking to another. But they’d killed them with blades or perhaps ‘smart’ BOWs using a control method. It would look to anyone that came like they’d been torn apart by-

By her.

Grady was missing, the radio was destroyed… by the time the BSAA chopper came back the trail of the real killers would be long cold. Best case she spent the next six months in five times the level of security as they tried to decide if she did it or had simply screwed up and let it happen.

Worst case they took one look and sent in an attack chopper a few hours later to test out those new incendiary rounds they were using in the miniguns to handle things like her.

“Goddamnit.” She sat down, kicking one of the mutated fish away, its body exploding into gore as part of it made it all the way to the water. Her one chance, likely her last chance, had been taken away from her. All because she’d been too sloppy, not paying attention to her surroundings like a rank amateur and not a woman that had been through this half a dozen times before and-

Wait.

What was that?

Her eyes blinked, jaw dropping open slightly as she crawled forward and then stood. In the distance, perhaps only a few hundred meters were lights. A boat… parked not far from the island, close enough that-

Could it be them? This Skadi or another that had attacked her? Perhaps they might still have Grady…

“Even if it’s just a fishing boat they might have a radio, and I can call in what happened and explain myself before someone jumps to conclusions.”

She stepped into the water, the cold almost welcoming to her body. Before she froze. Her tail floating behind her, her fins flexing in the surf. If it wasn’t her attackers, if it really was just some unfortunate fisherman that had ignored or missed the BSAA’s warnings.

What was she going to say?

“I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”

She didn’t really have a choice.

------

Chicago NPR

“Good afternoon. This is NPR with a special interview. I’m joined today by a remarkable young woman whom I’m sure you’ve likely heard of before. Ms. Graham, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners?”

“I don’t think that’s really necessary. I’ve talked enough about myself already. If they’re curious they can just listen to another one or read all those magazine articles over the last year.”

“If you're certain about that.”

“I’m not here to talk about myself again. This is about something more important. The EU is still holding back on using viril inhibitors even though they have an almost perfect track record of preventing death in the case of severe infection.”

“A perfect record?”

“Death as in the death of the person infected. If they survive in any sense they’re still alive. Before that the number of survival cases only numbered in a few dozen, at least those publicly known.”

“You make it sound like that number is different.”

“It is. I’ve looked at the classified Umbrella documents. They created SBOWs during their initial trials. They just weren’t considered useful, since they wanted either mindless slaves or ‘perfect’ super soldiers fit for some Aryan propaganda poster.”

“That seems a tad extreme.”

“Have you read the Wesker Report? The founders of Umbrella were charitably called eugenicists at best, even if their obsessions were odder than those of prior criminals and mad men.”

“I think we’re getting off topic Ms. Graham. Surely there are some good reasons to be suspicious of those viral inhibitors given their side effects.”

“The side effect is living. Without them surviving infection is a fluke event at best, almost always related to getting a vaccine in time, if one exists, or being a one in a million Golden Ticket immunity.”

“What about the number of mutations in the treatment? While the area is still under quarantine, TMZ snuck in recently and took pictures of a number of cases which are-”

“Like me you mean? It's public knowledge that the inhibitors were developed based on my own treatment, and when given to Plagas infected they could have similar effects.”

“Isn’t that a concern?”

“How? Even with the bans on research we’ve still managed to improve them enough that fully eighty percent of those given the inhibitor treatment to purge their bodies of Plagas strains showed no or minimal mutation. Even for the rest almost eighteen percent had very minor effects.”

“What about the remaining two percent? Isn’t that enough of a concern for continued studies and investigation?”

“No, and I don’t like the implication that we should continue ‘investigating’ when a treatment exists that could save people now.”

“I’m not sure I follow. What implication?”

“That it would be better if everyone dies then risk someone ending up like me.”

Chapter 4: Chapter 3

Summary:

Jill meets some friends, or makes some. After a bad first impression of course.
And plans how she'll move forward. Hopefully there's not more trouble awaiting her... or if there is, that she can swim against the currents that are in motion.

Chapter Text

Simon Salvesen probably shouldn’t have been out here with just one crewman. He probably also shouldn’t have hired that boy Svenn, who’d once again been late on arriving at the docks and costing them precious time at sea. But he was his nephew, a fool idiot though he was, and thus gave him another chance.

“And my brother’s going to beg me to give him another after this.”

Svenn was hauling up the nets, loaded with fish. A surprisingly good catch, but then he’d had a feeling that this lonesome rock was lucky when he’d looked at it on the map. A few clips south of the next major island and north enough of the coast that it had vanished over the horizon just as they’d come near it.

“Uncle, are we done?”

Simon stroked his beard, the long and scraggly white mane sticking out from the faded yellow of his hooded jacket. They still had the crab cages to get to on their way back, and with the fish they’d just caught he could reset them easily enough after they emptied them out. They’d be back later in the evening, but it hardly mattered now since neither he nor the boy was going to see daylight for another two months unless they headed down the coast later in the winter. As it was it would make up for their late start this morning on account of Svenn’s tardiness.

He hadn’t even had time to listen to the news or gossip at the docks like he was used to, rushing to get things set up because of how late Svenn had showed up.

“Not yet my boy. Secure the nets, we’ll be going the long way back.” He smiled as he saw his nephew’s shoulders slump. “Will do good to learn an honest day’s labor instead of spending all that time lazing about.”

Honestly, what did Svenn even do all day up in his room?

Shaking his head at his nephew’s foolishness, Simon made his way into the cabin, turning the light up as he adjusted the map and started checking the course to the crab cages along the low lying parts of the coast nearby. It would be a long, circuitous route home, but with plenty of fresh crab to show for it they’d earn their keep when they pulled in back home late in the evening.

“Perhaps a few extra hours at sea will teach the boy to be on time in the future.” Simon thought, plotting the course as the waves gently rocked the boat from side to side. Good weather, even though there’d been a warning of a storm soon, it had been delayed just long enough for them to make one more run up the coast. For whatever reason most of the other boats had been gone, more for them but-

“Wha-aaaAAAH!”

Svenn screamed, loud and panicked. Simon rushed out, fearing that he’d find the boy tangled in the net, arm broken as the weight of half a ton of fish threatened to pull him over and into the abyss. Instead he saw his nephew on the deck crawling backwards and pointing at something in the darkness. The rolling waves swayed the net to and fro over the deck, but nothing else was out of sorts.

Till a hand or something like a hand reached out from over the side and grabbed at the rope tying one of the buoys and Simon heard a sound like knives scratching at wood.

His stomach felt leadened as he clenched his jaw tight and kept the light on whatever it was. Kneeling down and grabbing Svenn’s shoulder firmly, shaking the boy till he looked up at him and away from the darkness.

“Get my gun.”

Svenn scurried off into the cabin, tripping over his own feet and cursing in blind panic as he did. Simon didn’t know what it was that had crawled out of the inky deep, but he intended to send it right back. His .45 could put down a beer and he’d been a crack shot back during his service so it was really only a matter of getting a good shot.

The thing hauled itself up, falling over and onto the boat, the size at least as tall as an adult man. Maybe a bit more. Behind it a long finned tail snapped about as it writhed on the deck. Rolling over and behind the entrance to the lower hold where he’d been about to dump their fish, he only saw the lower fins.

Lower legs .

It growled and moaned, strange and awful noises that warbled up from the beast and rose in pitch as if summoned forth by some wailing Siren of myth. All the while those fins stretched, cartilage pushing out as the sharp and strange sound of shifting bones moved the limbs outward and lower, the tail lifting as it did. Till the tips of those so called fins split, bony protrusions like sharp claws etching deep lines into the wood as they kicked out savagely and struck the side of his boat.

Once and then again, a cry came from the creature as it bucked up, a shark-like fin on its back raising as its legs snapped, bent below the knee and kicked through the wood before going still. The toes… the claws wiggling as it started to stand.

“Damn it… damn it boy, move faster!” Simon said, cursing under his breath, his hand shaking as he stepped back, looking around for anything that could be used to defend himself if Svenn was late.

His heart beat, a pounding countdown to doom as the beast’s bluish-black tail snapped down and it tried to stand. One clawed hand, webbed fingers like some horrific creature of beast and man, grabbing onto the side of the crate and lifting itself up. The head appeared at last.

“Oh my…”

The face… extended out from its home, a thickened hood of scale armor covering the white maw of a shark, the jet black eyes wide as it gazed up at him. The mouth parted, glimmering points of razor teeth showing in the darkness as the gills at the neck flexed and water dribbled from its jaw.

“Here you g-go uncle,” Svenn said, running down from the cabin at last.

“Thank god boy you-”

This wasn’t his gun.

“What the hell is this?!” Simon practically shouted, not daring to take his eyes off the creature as it started to rise up. The flesh transitioned into an inky black covering, like oil or seaweed that went from just below the chest down past the legs. The shape and contours were so like a man… so like a woman that he might have mistaken it for one if he hadn’t seen that nightmarish face, the misshapen legs, and that tail already upon it. The arms were thick as his own, capped with three fingered claws that had to be wickedly sharp given what he’d seen them already do. A merciless, hungry expression focused on the pair of them. Breathing in and out as it stood up taller and taller, almost a head taller than him now that the creature had risen to its full height.

And he with nothing but the speargun that had been mounted above the wheel.

Svenn had at least loaded it, and tried to pump the air chamber to pressure. But the thrice repaired tool was finicky at the best of times, and used to spear larger fish as they were brought up on those rare times he’d chartered his services out to rich sports fishermen. It wasn’t a weapon meant for this. Too hard to load, far too difficult to pump up to pressure even if it could shoot farther and harder than it should. And now it was all he had.

He braced it against his leg and put his weight into it. Feeling the pump slide down and then up.

“Uncle…”

“I see it!”

The beast was opening its mouth, putting a clawed hand to its throat as if the chill air above the water didn’t agree with it.

“Don’t you worry abomination! I’ll send you back to it.” Simon pushed down again, cursing as his gloved hands slipped and the pump shot up. The beast stepped around the hold entrance, turning its eyes to look at the fish they’d caught. Nostrils stretched as its mouth opened and closed. “Good you dumb beast… look at the fish and just give me a bit more-”

It turned towards them stepping around the net. Footfall by footfall, swaying unsteadily as it moved, no sea legs despite its aquatic nature. He pushed down the pump one more time, hearing it click and pulling the spear gun up, aiming for the creature's chest.

Only for it to grab at the gun, point it to the side as his finger hit the trigger, the spear rocketing outward and into the side of his boat.

He bit back the curse as he stared the beast down, Svenn huddled behind him and cried out in fear.

“A man dies on his feet,” Simon thought, reaching for his knife and ready for one last, and likely futile, attempt to slay this thing.

Only for it to grab at his wrist, the mouth parting open, the rows of teeth showing even through the slight opening of the jaw as the fleshy hood of bluish scales pulled back and the fin about its skull rose up slightly. He stared back, his own teeth bared in a far less impressive display, as when he’d lost two in a brawl there hadn’t been another pair ready to spring up and take their place.

The creature loomed over him, ready to end his life and-

“[Do you speak English?]”

Svenn looked up, staring blankly at the seaborne abomination. Simon turning to look at his nephew, tears and snot running down his face as he looked up at the shark… woman ?

“[Y-yes?]” Sveen said, stuttering over his words. Before dropping down, grabbing at the creature’s legs and… wetsuit? Simon’s own eyes widened as he looked closer at what he had thought to be skin, seeing the seams of cloth that were attached to the fins turned legs, stretching out and stopping below the thighs as. Small clasps and metal hooks hanging loose about the narrow waist and slightly wider hips above which his nephew was currently, and quite pathetically, prostrated. “[Please don’t eat us!]”

It… she , let go of Simon’s hand, allowing him to step back and hold his knife before him as he grabbed Svenn and pulled him back towards the steps of the cabin. His gun was still in there, but he’d half to run in, load it, and get out before-

“There’s no way.” Simon looked at Svenn and asked, “What is it saying?”

“I… I don’t know,” Svenn said, shaking his head.

She cocked her head to one side, the strange action oddly human before she opened her mouth once more. Simon shuddered as she spoke. “[I’m not going to eat you. What are you doing out here?]”

“Boy?”

“She… she asked us what we’re doing here,” Svenn said, standing up, rubbing his face with the back of his jacket and shaking his head as he met Simon’s confused look with his own. “I don’t know uncle, I’m telling you the truth!”

“Tell her we're just fishermen!”

“God, what is this… thing?”

Sven nodded, speaking to the strange fish woman from the deep. “[We are just humble fishermen. We meant no… harm to your kind.]”

She opened her mouth and then closed it again, looking from Svenn to Simon and back again. Her armored hood of scales and flesh tugged down for a moment as those jet black eyes narrowed and the nostrils opened and closed as she no doubt smelled their fear in the air.

Before looking back to the fish they’d caught and speaking once more. “[You shouldn’t be out here.]”

Svenn looked back at Simon, repeating what he’d heard. All the while the sea woman walked over to the spear stuck in the wood, yanking it out and pointing it at the two of them. The threatening motion made both step back as she spoke again.

“[Didn’t you read the news?]”

“... the news?” Svenn said.

She stabbed the spear tip into the net, pulling out a fish wriggling at the tip. Planting it down onto the wooden crate nearby she used the metal to gut the fish. Simon’s lip curled up in disgust at the brutal act of unneeded savagery, not even trying to kill the poor animal before-

Before he felt his stomach lurch, the smell and sight made him feel as if he would vomit at any moment as the insides of the Cod writhed, a forest of tiny pink tendrils where its guts had been, the eyes bulging out and pinkish red. The scales flaking off and the whole of it rotten in a way he’d never imagined.

Svenn didn’t have the constitution and rushed to the side of the boat as the sight and smell assaulted him. All the while the fish continued to twitch and move, as if being cut from tip to tail was more an inconvenience than anything else.

His English wasn’t good, but now, the panic from before giving way to exhausted confusion as the adrenaline that had been burning through his blood at last departed, he tried his own hand at communicating with their strange visitor from the depths.

“[What… do you want?]”

She pointed at herself and made a gesture with her three fingered hand, that webbed though it was unmistakable.

“[Radio… phone? I need to call the BSAA.]”

“God, an American fish woman wants to use my phone.” Simon stepped back, not taking his eyes off of her as he moved into the cabin. Grabbing the phone off of its charger and handing it over. His eyes did slide across the drawer with the gun once more, but at this point he’d wager he’d best just ride out this strange encounter without any violence.

She didn’t take it, instead waving her claws about as if that explained why. Simon nodded, Svenn returning, still looking green about the gills as it were, while he opened his phone up and-

“That’s odd… I normally get at least a bit of signal.”

“[What’s the problem?]”

“[The phone’s dead… we must be too far from the coast.]”

Simon nodded, not sure what Svenn had said exactly, but suspecting that it was about the issue with the phone.

“[What about your radio?]”

“[That should work],” Svenn said, walking into the cabin and unclipping the microphone from the radio. He dialed in the harbor and paused, looking back at the looming shark… woman that now stood at the entrance. His uncle was still staring at her, while both of them took in how she was obviously wearing a tight black wet suit over most of her body. The oddly humanoid proportions of parts standing out against the rest, though the stark white of her face seemed to continue under the covering, which looked to contain an almost human-like bust. Though below that a hole was shorn through the material, as if torn violently and stained red in places still. The skin beneath it was the same white shark hide by appearances, as if the injury had long since healed.

“[What?]” she said, her eyes blinking… and then blinking again as a second set of eyelids slid sideways as well.

“[Nothing,]” Svenn said quickly, looking down and blushing slightly. “[What should I say?]”

She paused, her right foot tapping against the stairs for a moment before speaking. “[Tell them that BSAA Agent Valentine has to make an emergency report.]”

“BSAA?!”

“What is this about?”

“Oh my… Uncle I think… this might be a… we might be in a-”

“What boy, spit it out!”

“Those might be infected fish.”

“Of course they’re infected, what else could they… be…”

Simon looked back at their very odd guest. And then turned to gaze back at the mutated and rotting yet still living fish. The pieces coming together, slowly, but surely in his head. Before he sank to the ground, shaking his head and muttering to himself. “Of all the damn things to happen this winter.”

Svenn ignored him, sending the message as requested. And being greeted with nothing but static in return. He repeated twice more, his surprise giving way to shock and then something else.

Suspicion.

“It’s not working,” Sven said, before turning to the Agent Valentine and continuing, “[Something’s blocking the signal.]”

“[Are you sure?]”

He flipped to another channel. And then another still. Static greeting them each time, even from the emergency broadcast beacon towards the south. Shaking his head as he set the radio down at last. “[We should have gotten something from one of those.]”

“[That’s sophisticated electronic warfare tactics. Even then whoever is doing this can’t be too far off.]” She looked out into the darkness, though whether her eyes saw anything they could not she didn’t say. Turning back towards the two of them at last. “[I need to contact the BSAA as soon as possible. Is there a port with a landline nearby?”

“[The closest one is back on the coast, but that would take almost ten hours to reach for us.]”

“[Damn it! That will take too long.]”

“What are you two talking about?” Simon said, unable to parse the fast moving conversation.

“She’s a BSAA agent… I think?” Svenn said. “And she needs to contact the authorities but someone’s blocking our radio.”

“Well, why not head north to Heimfest?”

“Heimfest?”

“Yes? There’s that old soviet radio tower there. You can bounce signals clean across the arctic if you wanted.”

Svenn nodded a smile coming across his face as he turned towards their strange, but perhaps not that truly frightening, guest once more.

“She thinks that’s a good idea. We can get to Heimfest in under two hours if we start now.”

“Well get going Svenn!” Simon said, taking up his knife again as he walked towards the net of fish.

No use taking useless cargo with them after all. And perhaps the BSAA would reward them for ferrying an agent around.

Even if they were a very odd sort.

“I suppose I did hear in the news that those Americans were starting to work with these creatures or something.” Though that one had looked more like an oversized insect…

------

The boat made good time, arriving along the coast of the chain of islands further north in just over an hour and a half. Not that time had much meaning this far into the Arctic Circle. It was just as dark as when they started, only flowing blue and green of the aurora far into the heavens providing any color above dark waves below. The clouds from before had parted, at least for a moment, and it painted a beautiful image across the sky. Jill relished the mild distraction as they pulled towards the harbor, her fins resting and the corners of her mouth slightly open, the phantom sensation of a smile across her new features as she looked up. She’d never had the opportunity to see this before, plans for a vacation or trip north long since put on hold after Raccoon.

And now it was not her human eyes that at last beheld this particular wonder of the natural world.

She tapped her clawed digits against the wooden railing, idly wondering if it would have looked so vivid before. Her vision was sharper than before, or at least seemed to adjust to near total darkness with uncanny speed. Given what the T-Abyss had made her look like, more a humanoid shark than a person, she should be thankful that she had been saddled with the weaknesses of that creature instead of seeming to only gain its strengths. The cold weather barely bothered her, the underlying toughness of her skin providing the insulation that her rather thin wetsuit did not.

Even where the form fitting outfit was torn open, showing the now completely healed gray-white of her flesh, she barely noticed the nearly freezing water spraying up into the air as the waves rocked against them. Hell, it zipped up only just above her chest (or the vestigial remnants there of) and aside from a slight prickling sensation against the gills she barely noticed how much of her body was uncovered or being shown off now that she’d tossed the bloodstained and torn parka back onto the beach where she’d left it.

Along with pretty much everything else, save those pair of emergency flares that were still tucked into a small pouch at her side.

She was under armed at the moment, severely so. Even discounting how much of herself was being shown off this made her feel more vulnerable by comparison.

Looking back to the younger man who spoke English well enough to at least understand that she was an official BSAA agent requesting their aid.

Well, she still was one for the moment. No telling how long till whoever had set up that massacre got what they wanted and a termination order was put out on her as ‘Dangerous BOW that has escaped containment’ or however they ended up spinning it. Chris would be livid, but that would hardly change things unless she could find some evidence to disprove her involvement.

“Worst of all, we don’t have time for this BS,” Jill thought, the slits of her nose at the tip of her snout shrinking slightly as she inhaled more of the lingering putrescence of that rotten net of fish. Even cut loose and sinking back into the abyss about them, it remained about the deck as a vivid reminder that whoever was actually behind that attack couldn’t have picked a worse time to put the already triggerhappy European BSAA on the wrong trail. There was no telling what the potential damage and ensuing death toll could be if they wasted too much time and effort worrying about her when this unknown infection had already become that rampant.

“It could be a string of mini-Raccoons up and down the coast.”

Assuming it didn’t end up in any major sea currents, contaminating more substantial supplies of maritime life. Jill’s claws tightened on the wood, dragging tiny marks as her mouth narrowed and she turned her gaze from the last flickers of that radiant heavens, the haze of clouds fast blowing over to obscure them. That would be a disaster.

“We’ve been so lucky so far. Aside from… Wesker,” Jill thought, the name bringing forth a slight vibrating growl that came from deep in her chest and was probably not a sign of her new body’s altered instincts or behaviors no matter how it sounded. “Aside from him, most of the major outbreaks have been highly isolated, purposely so. This is haphazard by comparison, closer to what happened at Raccoon but done in a place that could potentially be far more devastating.”

They couldn’t afford to waste any time following false leads on this.

As they came up onto the dock, Jill cast her gaze towards the blinking lights on the tip of the old radio tower, far across the ex-Soviet mining town. Heimfest looked abandoned as the came up to it, a light dusting of snow from the storms over the last few days covering the ground right up to the edge of the dock itself.

“You still haven’t gotten anyone?”

“No ma’am-I mean Agent,” the one she’d learned was called Svenn said, looking towards her and then away quickly. Not yet recovered from the rather substantial fright she’d given him and the older man when she’d hopped into their boat, throat sore from her first use of gills in salt water. She hadn’t even intended to do that, but it had been an almost instinctual reaction to diving into the rolling waves and swimming forward. Much like the metamorphosis of her lower legs towards something more fin-like, the digitrade claws popping and shifting as her cartilage armor shifted over her own bones and twisted both into more aquatic form as she moved. Thankfully it had been quite temporary and her body had readily regained a more natural, or what passed for natural for her now, bipedal stance as soon as she’d gotten out of the water.

She was certain the sight of her shifting from one mode to another had to be quite the sight. It had certainly felt like one, though she’d been more concerned about getting her voice back before they took a shot at her. “I’m just glad all they had was that speargun.”

Speaking of which…

Jill picked it up, noting the long and strong steel fishing line reeled up along the base and tied to the spear itself. The purpose, shooting fish too big or too troublesome to be hoisted in and dragging them behind the boat was clear, though at the moment she was more considering how the makeshift reapers had torn off whatever trigger guard there might have been. It was pneumatic, armed by pumping the cylinder. A taxing and strenuous effort.

Though as she wrapped her talon tipped fingers about it and yanked it down she felt only a moderate resistance if any at all.

“Finally a silver lining.”

She continued to reel in the line and re-attach the spear itself from where she’d been using it to dissect one of the undead fish from before, sparing a glance into the cabin where the older man was still fruitlessly trying to pick up some signal on the radio.

“Still nothing from the docks?”

“No… uncle hasn’t been able to reach anyone.”

“Damn it.” Jill slid the spear into the barrel with a soft click and slung it around her shoulder by the strap. It wasn’t much, but at least it gave her something for whatever might be ahead of them. “So either they’re blocking these radio bands all the way up here too…”

“Or there’s no one to pick up.”

Either case meant trouble, since if there was anyone left in Heimfest they should have noticed that the first rate signal denial system had cut them off from the mainland and made some effort to reconnect already. That they hadn’t painted a very bad picture, one Jill had seen too many times already not to have suspicion as to what might be waiting for her in that snow covered coal town.

“Uncle says that the tower is straight ahead, just within the old base. You can’t really miss it.”

The unstated insinuation of ‘Now please leave and get there on your own’ didn’t need to be said. Though Jill looked them both over before she left. The older one was eying the controls and hadn’t made to tie the boat up. Forgetting for a moment that she might need another ride, especially if she wanted to go somewhere in particular she really did need to make them aware of the danger they were in.

And how it wasn’t from her.

“I wouldn’t leave if I were you.”

Svenn’s uncle said something, Svenn replying, and the two shared a quick and harsh conversation before he turned back to her. “Ah… what do you mean Agent Valentine?”

“Whoever is blocking off communication can probably tell if a boat tries to get out. Given the kind of equipment this would take… they probably have ways to deal with that if it comes up.”

She saw the dawning horror overtake his face as he translated for his uncle. He moved forward, looking at her with the same grim determination that had had him ready to try and knife BOW to death back on the deck.

“How do we… stay safe?” he asked, English hatling and accented heavily.

“Keep low, try not to draw any attention. If there was somewhere safe to hunker down in I’d suggest that, but there’s no telling what’s here.” After a moment’s thought Jill continued, “And given what I’ve seen so far, don’t eat or drink anything that’s not bottled or canned.”

She stepped out of the boat, giving them three fingered wave off as she started down the dock. Her claws crunching into the light snow and leaving distinctly non-human tracks with every step. Thankfully the cold didn’t bother her.

The silence did.

She was half way through the main shipping port of Heimfest, the enormous storage building and coal loading system looming over her before she saw any sign of life.

Or what had been life.

She kneeled down, her tail flopping against the cold concrete under the overhang. Thankfully no snow here, but this little shelter had done no good for the man before her. A scruffy five o’clock shadow on cheeks a dark bluish color. Eyes gray and dead, veins standing out and an angry purple on his still and unmoving neck from under the coat he wore. She placed the softer, grayer tips of her fingers against his throat, not expecting a pulse but testing the level of rigor mortis or freezing that had already occurred.

More give than she had expected, meaning he couldn’t have been dead for that long.

“What happened here?” Jill looked around, her armored hood tightening, the tip of her back fin seeming more pointed as her body shifted with tension and she stood up. Listening quietly for any sign of motion in the surrounding buildings.

She neither heard nor saw anything no matter how hard she tried.

Jill stood up at last, a single glance spared for the dead man as she started towards the open gate at the far end of the structures. She’d almost made it halfway before she heard soft and muted sounds. Not unlike the breaking and snapping of soft bits of wood.

Or flesh as it was.

Jill turned, part of her darkher hood slipping down almost over her eyes as the dead man shifted, pulling up. The skin breaking apart in places, eyes still milky and dead but beggining to bulge out as they stood. The sounds became more distinct, louder and with perverse purpose as the limbs broke and yet held the part way up. Climbing to their feet and stumbling forward, the lips parting open. A far too red tongue lolling out, splitting apart into a mass of tendrils like thin wispy wires as they moved through the near darkness. The spotlights above illuminated them more as they walked closer, no sound in their passage but the slight crunch of the minor snowfall blown in under the overhang and the more notable sounds of their body’s unnatural reanimation. The pained and awful noises setting her on edge, her jaw almost twisting open as the barest hint of her teeth showed and her hands tried to ball into fists. Her claws made the effort difficult.

Till at last she pulled the speargun from her shoulder, racking the pump back three times and then a fourth, feeling the stress even on even her body, before she aimed down. And let it fly. The spear impacting through the throat. The body jerking back, the mouth wrenching open further, more of that pink-red mass spraying out.

Only for Jill to grab onto the wire and pull hard, wrenching the deadman’s form towards her. Where she grabbed hold of the spear and twisted it, and his head, completely off of his body.

Death did not claim him, though now he merely clawed and pushed at the ground. Not her first encounter with such a problem, though she could only hope the rest would be as slow and half frozen.

She shook her head at that.

“It’s never that easy.”

------

Pneumatic Speargun

A custom speargun with a modified pump chamber repaired and reinforced to increase air capacity. As a side effect it is quite hard to arm, requiring considerable strength.

Obviously not an issue.

Damage: **

Range: **

Special: * (Tethered to a rope, allows for targets to be reeled in).

Chapter 5: Chapter 4

Summary:

Jill Valentine searches for clues... and finds some complications.
But there might be a way to avoid some of them.
And probably find new ones.

Chapter Text

As annoying as it might have been to not be carrying her more trusted equipment, there was one big advantage. Stealth.

The eerie silence wouldn’t be disturbed by Jill, leaving her ample opportunities to stop at corners or the unsecured gates standing before her, peeking her head out, facial features as unreadable as ever, but the slight tightness of the thicker armoring of her facial hood giving evidence to the tension in her body. Assuming the way her tail was unconsciously flicking from side to side in minute and persistent motions, as if following the instructions of her SBOW inherited instincts on how to swim slow and unheard towards some prey.

Though as ferocious as she appeared at first glance and the ease at which she had dispatched that first zombie, Jill wasn’t about to assume she was the predator in this environment. She didn’t know what she was dealing with, only that whatever it was, it had managed to depopulate the frozen over old mining town and leave rather little evidence of its passage. Which meant something that spread fast and killed faster.

“Or that it had help…”

Bad enough was the possibility of zombies from an currently unknown viral source with who knows what possible BOW variations, assuming further mutations came in the package. Nowadays one had to worry about ‘smart’ BOWs. Not meaning her, but instead the various improved control and targeting methods that had been used. The Plagas was popular for that, either through direct implementation of Queen-Slave protocols using different versions or pheromone targeting system. Then of course one had to worry about the advances in conditioning used on Tyrant-Class BOWs, which while tending to include less hyper-evolving prototypes as they did in the old days were now far more useful as fire and forget biological terminators. Other systems with post-infection cybernetic implants, chemical or auditory conditioning as further control systems had also been used to some success. Gone were the days where a BOW was guaranteed to act as a near mindless beast, barely more cognizant than the zombie hordes around them.

Most were better classified as biological drones, possibly guided by a human intellect ordering them and even more troubling, coordinating them to attack in the most effective manner.

If something like that had happened here, it could explain the lack of evidence or damage. Most of the small population left to keep the lights on during the darkest and coldest part of the winter wiped out before they had a chance to sound any alarm. Of course this was all blatant speculation, it could just as easily have been an entirely mundane assault which had taken the unprepared workers by surprise, cut off the radio and then cut their throats just as efficiently.

Jill sniffed at the air, a stray snowflake falling from above onto the tip of her gray snout as she stuck her head out from behind a parked truck next to a desolate building that must have been part of the central control for the loading and unloading system. She didn’t see anything, she didn’t hear anything, hell, she didn’t even smell anything. “What happened to everyone?”

She was starting to think that that body she’d found was the lone forgotten one, left behind by whoever had swept through earlier. Only to turn down the main street, or what could very charitably be called that in place so small that it had solitary general store and what looked like a small bar or recreation area attached nearby as the lone example of color against the drab grays and blues of old Soviet-era construction that had neither been replaced or much altered in the last forty years. But there, not far from that bar, was a charnel pile of bodies. Cadavers piled up around a central area and dosed with gas going by the smell. Then set aflame, and allowed it to burn for as long as they could. Long enough that they were now blackened and charred, almost fleshless gaunt things, naked or covered in bits of ruined cloth that had survived the fire.

Jill approached them, curious as to what other evidence might be nearby. Only to pause midstep, not risking even that slight crunch of snow under foot.

She’d heard something.

A fast sprint about the body pile and against the entrance to the bar, the very nearly dead neon of an unreadable sign flickering above her as she spared only the most hesitant glance outward. A dull humming, louder than that of the street lights and just different enough was coming from somewhere nearby. Approaching closer and-

There!

She saw it as only a shadow in front of a light on one of the larger, oldest looming buildings that stood like a gray mausoleum on this dead island. But the small flitting shadow was unmistakable. The drone slowly moved through the air, pausing as cameras no doubt scanned over the street where she had been. Before it turned and moved off, further down the road.

“That could be bad.” The infected were one thing, even if she was playing it safe as she could when dealing with an entirely unknown infection. But whoever had set up the signal interference had to be the same ones with those drones, as they wouldn’t be able to control them if they weren’t in control of the blockers. Which meant…

Well, Jill didn’t know what it meant, but like she’d told Svenn and his uncle. Anyone that could and would bring that kind of gear out here wasn’t going to stop at non-lethal ways to silence witnesses. And the last thing Jill wanted to experience was the business end of high-explosive munitions or an anti-material rifle.

Or in other words, the solutions that prepared militaries brought out when dealing with things like her these days. Human rights issues and war crimes very specifically not covering creatures that had been defined out of being human after all. Thankfully she had one very big thing going for her in comparison to most of the BOWs that those tactics had been invented to deal with.

She’d been in the meetings that had drawn them up in the first place.

“So, drone patrols to limit direct engagement with infectious vectors and possible BOWs. Possibly armed ones too, but they’d probably keep those in reserve unless needed.” That, and if they could pull out a full automated missile strike at will she was dealing with an ‘officially’ unofficial black-ops group or someone with pockets as deep as Umbrella’s used to be. Even if the best they could do was direct fire support or prepare a sniper ambush the effect would be the same if Jill let herself be spotted and didn’t know about it in time.

One very bullet ridden Valentine.

Her jaw parted, teeth showing in frightful display as she tried to frown. She could keep moving slowly, staying in the cluttered areas between some of the buildings. But that ran the risk of untold numbers of possible early warning signs. The other option of course was to break into the buildings, taking advantage of the fact that maintaining surveillance over all of this at once would be a daunting task for a clandestine operation when they could just monitor the outside and see who entered or left. It would at least get her closer to that lone radio tower standing tall in the distance at the other side of Heimfest.

What she really needed was a map. Or directions.

A sound of breaking glass came from behind her, Jill turning swiftly, the blue-gray of her carapace hood falling over her eyes as her jaw snapped closed and she warily stared into the shadowed building behind her. Taking a close look inside for the first time she saw how chairs and tables had been moved around, some braced against the door itself. She experimentally tried to open it, feeling it shift only a bit before a chain halted her motion.

But not, thankfully a very thick one. And it was attached to the frame of the door itself, bolted to the wood but hardly an insurmountable obstacle. At least to what she was now. She didn’t have any bolt cutters or a key for the padlock fastening it shut, but she had three webbed claws and just enough room to get her arm in and grab onto it firmly. Wrenching it from side to side, the metal buckling slightly as her grip tightened before she felt the bolts holding it to the door frame yank out slightly with barely audible creak of stressing wood. She pushed and pulled harder, a low growl in her throat as part of the chain broke and the whole of it came loose at last. Dropping it to the floor she reached inside and pulled up at the table, her claws digging into the wood as she dragged it in with the door itself.

The sound wasn’t quiet, but she did her best not to make too much of a racket as she slipped in, stepping over broken bottles and shattered glass. Her tail trailing over them, the fin feeling the splinters of the wood as she crouched down and passed by the abandoned bar, turning towards a light source and a sound of motion coming from a floor halfway down from where she now stood. A loon light of a lantern illuminating a pool table, and a figure standing before it.

Mumbling something in… Russian?

He wasn’t dressed in the sub zero worker outfit, instead the drab green colors of positively ancient military uniform adorned him as he… sang?

Jill didn’t know enough to guess the meaning, but the melody was there at least, and with one broken bottle on the floor and the scent of strong liquor perfuming the air she could estimate what was happening. Even if it made rather little sense. This man looked healthy…

She brought her left foot forward only to be rewarded by a cacophony of sounds as a fishing line went taunt and empty cans fell over along the nearest booth. The man whirled about, the bottle still in one hand as he grabbed at a pistol. Hesitating for a moment as he saw her in the darkness before aiming. Jill was about to speak, only to hear a loud click as the chamber failed to fire.

He grimaced, looking at the gun before he threw it at her, the act stopping her from speaking in sheer surprise. That he immediately took another drink from the bottle, almost emptying it at that added to the sight. She cocked her head to one side, the hood pulling back as her dark eyes shined in the lantern light.

And then he smashed the bottle against the pool table and shouted something at her.

“... do you really think that would work?”

He paused, staring back at her, the bottle falling from his hand and breaking against the floor next to the earlier one that Jill had heard.

“ Kakogo cherta - you can talk ?”

------

“So of course Haagan, God rest his soul, he would always say ‘Samuil, Samuil, you must pay tab’,” Samuil said, holding yet another bottle he had purloined from the now dead proprietor of the bar/store/recreational location of Heimfest. Jill nodded along, more curious at the moment on how this man could possibly still be conscious after consuming that much liquor. The smell from him was simply overpowering, though he seemed surprisingly coherent despite it all. Not particularly perturbed by Jill’s form either, simply shrugging it off as ‘How the Americans must be doing things now’ when she’d said she worked for the BSAA.

“‘Back in my day it was different?’ What was he even talking about,” Jill thought, Samuil taking another drink and sinking lower into the booth at the far corner of the room. He’d sequestered himself next to ready supply of drinks, of which he could be certain weren’t contaminated and the piles of unopened (and a small pile of opened) cans showed that the food hadn’t been a problem either. Ammo for the antique he’d tried to shoot her with had run out, but as long as he kept quiet and stayed off the streets it looked like he’d survive.

At least till the generators went down and he froze to death, but as far as plans in a crisis like this Jill had seen far worse fail far quicker.

Wishing she had simple way to communicate her disinterest in the ‘Struggles of Samuil’ to pay his bar tab, or at least one that didn’t rely on baring teeth or some other intimidating mannerism of her body language, Jill coughed lightly from where she leaned against the pool table.

“That’s… interesting, but you said you could tell me what happened here.” Jill waved her webbed hand about the empty room, the humanoid shadow of her finned form cast upon the wall behind her in flickering lantern light. “This must have happened fast.”

“ Da , one day everything fine, trying to dig deeper into coal mines. New owners want more, always more. Not like old days though. Not at first anyway,” Samuil paused as he spoke, looking at Jill with a strange sort of intensity. “Back then, the first time, they sent men from Moscow to find out why.”

“Why what?”

“Why some get sick and some did not.”

“Wait, he can’t mean…”

Jill rose up, standing over him, the tension readable even to Samuil in how her tail stiffened and the armored cartilage that covered her back and most of her head tightened, making her fins seem more aggressive, pointed and sharp in that moment. Her mouth opened wider than she intended, the shock showing teeth and the unusually long (for what she looked like now anyway) tongue in her mouth as she spoke. “This happened before?”

“Oh yes. Back in… 86? Big deal. Lots of very smart ,” Samuil let out a barking laugh at the word before continuing, “men came here. First they thought it just weird disease, then when the 6th excavation team all coughed up lungs they think they found new bio-weapon. But Samuil stay healthy!”

He punched his chest to emphasize the point. Almost dropping the bottle in his other hand as he did so. Jill’s expression was unreadable, though the slight tilt of her head communicated the disbelief she felt at what she had just heard.

“Hell, I felt better after I came up from mine that day.”

“He has to be making this up,” she thought. Leaning closer and looking at him. A middle aged at most man, stinking of liquor and wearing an old military uniform which looked a bit loose on him at that.“You were in the mines twenty years ago?”

“Ha! I’ve been on Heimfest since ‘73. Came when it was a penal colony and we built the radio tower. But then I was stuck with the rest and we just ended up working in the mines since the war never came. Till we broke through into that bad air and then… khrenoten !”

He made an odd and very clearly vulgar gesture as he sank into his seat.

“All turned to shit. Everyone get sick except Samuil, everyone beg for a bullet except Samuil and everyone but Samuil…”

He trailed off, broken English fading into Russian, staring at the bottle in his hands before roughly throwing it at the nearby wall. It shattered, the liquid running down the faded wallpaper and adding one more stain to the multitude.

All while Jill started to understand.

“You were immune.”

He nodded, still looking down as he did.

“But no one else was.”

“ Da . The doctors, they tried to figure it out, but as the bodies piled up and the cost mounted they just sealed it over and left.”

“Wait, is that what happened?” Jill asked, stepping forward, the floor boards creaking under her as she moved swiftly, not bothering with the cautious actions she’d been taking since she’d become aware of how unsettling she could be at times. “Someone came in and opened up the tunnels you mentioned?”

“No… it’s all still sealed. Under Heimfest.”

------

Under Heimfest was quite literal. They only had to walk into the basement to find old bomb shelter tunnels that led straight from the bar, once the old Soviet forward guard post apparently, all the way up to the military base they’d built east of the mine. The town, from the old concrete apartment blocks to the storage buildings was riddled with such things, the whole of them firmly shut, long faded warnings plastered over the door. The myriad of warnings couldn’t decide if it was nuclear, a biohazard, or simply a matter of worker safety.

The point was clear regardless.

No one should proceed past this point.

“So this leads all the way up to the radio tower?”

Samuil nodded, idly picking up the now ancient and rusted chains that bound the airtight door and kept one from turning the crank to open them. Letting it drop with a loud and echoing clang that reverberated through the small room and likely the passage behind.

“Just straight ahead… the yellow line. Not the blue…” He trailed off again, turning away and once more mumbling to himself as he began to climb the stairs back up to the bar. Jill’s mouth opened slightly, the attempt of a frown as she turned her eyes back on the departing man. He’d been remarkably calm, or simply too drunk, to react as she’d expected after the initial panic. But there had to be more he could tell her.

“Like, how did this get out if the mines were blasted shut and this is still closed off?” He’d mentioned someone new taking over, but had only cursed up a storm in Russian about ruining the union when Jill had tried to find out who that had been. Even then that hardly explained the why of all this. The one lucky survivor didn’t necessarily know what was really going on.

Jill had some experience in that matter first hand.

While Samuil probably knew more, piecing it together from his rants would take too long and she was on strict time limit already. She’d been… unconscious for almost half an hour, taken two to get this far. It had been about one more since she’d come to Heimfest and now she was going to have to take a long, dark and probably dingy route to the old radio tower so she could get there without being found out by the real culprits of the massacre she’d survived earlier.

She just didn’t have the time to find out anything else. Hopefully Samuil would survive and sober up, but as for her…

Jill grabbed onto the metal chains, far tougher and far stronger than the improvised door lock from before. She braced her foot against the metal, the boney white foot claws of her digitrade fin-leg pressed down and made hard scratching sounds as she pulled. Her muscles strained, the armored flesh of her hood fell over her eyes as her body pressed on the effort more and more.

At last she let out a loud groan of effort that shifted from her emulation of her human voice, primate and female and into something deeper and stranger, her jaw showing more than one row of teeth for a moment as she opened her mouth wider than she normally dared and tugged even harder.

The rusted metal gave, warped, and finally snapped loose as she stepped back, her tail came to smack against the damp concrete, her fins shifted from side to side as she tossed the useless metal away. She stepped forward, grabbing onto the crank handle of the door and gave it a hard turn. Long disused gears gave awful sounds from within as she moved it slowly, till at last the mechanism moved and the door shifted loose. Jill pulled it open, her jaw coming to snap fully closed as the dank and dusty smell from beyond came to her and she stared ahead into utter pitch darkness.

Pulling one of the two flares from her side pouch, she snapped it between what was once her thumb and what was once another pair of fingers, holding the brightening green light before her as she shook it.

Stepping into that darkness. Worried that there might be something worse in it than herself.

Somewhere, in the dark reaches of her mind and memory she heard the self-confident laugh, thinking of how sickeningly self-assured Wesker had always seemed. He’d probably find the idea of her being afraid, especially as she now was ( thanks to him of course ) absolutely hilarious.

“Stop thinking about ghosts Jill,” she thought. She moved forward, her hood slipping back again, dark eyes trying to peer into the shadows as she did. There was nothing to be afraid of down her.

It had been dead and buried for over two decades. Not even BOWs could live that long without something to eat…

Chapter 6: Chapter 5

Summary:

Jill Valentine does some urban exploration.
It goes about as well as it ever does for her.

Chapter Text

The musty smell only grew stronger the further she went. Stale air suffocated her, so much that she felt her gills open and close, straining to breath against it all the further she went into those long sealed depths. The scents were wrong, long dead and muted in a way she hadn’t gotten used to before. The sterility of the hospitals and treatment centers, all alcohol and a hint of bleach. It had been a blanket over her, smothering her in those long months after she’d been pulled from Wesker’s control and woke to feel limbs she hadn’t been born with, looking out of eyes that felt too far apart. Gazing at a face, unused to her own muscles, as frozen and expressionless as she’d been before when she’d just been human, hair dyed to offer slight difficulty in identifying her, standing beside and frozen before each murderous experiment she bore witness to.

That was far in the past now, the illfit hospital gowns tossed away for various attempts at clothing her new body, and now garbed as she was in a manner that would, save for the altered physiology, have looked quite similar to one of her older BSAA uniforms. But here and now, in that dark and forgotten tomb beneath a town emptied of life by a virus once again the memories came rushing back.

She’d been here before.

Again and again, each time a different disaster, a different virus. Whatever innocence she had had lost in that first initial run through the Arklay Mountains. Buried along with so much else as she’d escaped the Spencer mansion. She had still had hope even then.

Before Raccoon.

Before she’d seen a city burn itself to the ground, bodies ravaged by a fever hotter than the flames that tore through it unchecked. Her own efforts to bring some justice to those already dead fruitless, obstructed from within and without. Before Umbrella had sent a monster to personally end her.

She almost felt flattered now to think that they worried so much about her testimony that they spared a prototype of that caliber just for her. Of course it had been just another test, a trial by fire of their upgraded Tyrants in a target rich environment. Sometimes she wondered though, had she’d always been someone that intrigued Wesker’s mad concept of perfection and strength before…

Or had her survival, her triumph over Nemesis been part of what had eventually damned her to this fate?

“Not like I’ll ever know for sure,” Jill thought, something almost like a smile showing teeth as she turned a corner and gazed into the darkness ahead. “The bastard is finally dead.”

Jill froze as she came to the end of the tunnel. Or more correctly the end of the tunnel above water. Pipes didn’t take well to low temperature and while most of Heimfest had probably avoided running its plumbing through this old bunker, it looked like some of it had remained functional long past the point they’d closed them up. Stagnant water pooled before her as the concrete corridor sloped down. Above the broken pipe still dripping water. As she put the tip of her foot into it, feeling the damp cold embrace she wondered if this might have happened because no one was left alive above to check if the pipes began to overpressure or kept the heat on in most of the buildings. Thankfully it hadn’t frozen over down here, though it couldn’t be too far from doing so.

“Well nothing else to do about it.”

Past her feet, the more armored parts of her legs, the water’s cold soaked into her down to the bones. She could feel her body yearning to react, to shift in slight and major ways, the smooth and disturbingly un -painful metamorphosis towards even more aquatic movement. But it wasn’t deep enough and frankly she could swim better even as she was now than she could have… before.

Besides, it couldn’t go on that far?

------

Her lungs burned. Her gills even more so.

It wasn’t that the water was that deep or even that cold. It was simply dead. She’d never encountered this before, the closest being an experimental trip to a pool during her period of somewhat unnecessary physical therapy. It had seemed a natural idea, probably why they had pushed for it. Till she realized how her body’s instinctual desire to breath in water didn’t work well in a chlorinated environment. She wasn’t sure if that oversight was malicious or simply deeply stupid, but it had proven a point to her. Not all water was Jill approved.

Sure, she’d gotten used to controlling that new reflex over time, and while the memory from before rather colored her desire to do so, she could go for laps at the gym without mistakenly breathing the wrong way and getting gills full of stinging water. But this was something else entirely.

Utterly dead.

No motion, nothing but a grimy taste and stillness so complete she could feel the echoing of her webbed hands disturbing the water and then bouncing back against her own body. The armored hood had pulled down low, not that it was obstructing anything as she could barely see as the flare began to fade.

Nothing but the cold, nearly freezing water and a suffocating darkness.

Literally so, as her gills opened and closed, unable to pull any oxygen from the water no matter how hard she tried. She could handle this for a while, but that hardly made it pleasant to do so. Already she’d traveled far enough that backtracking towards the air behind her would be a strenuous and unpleasant exertion. Or so she hoped.

It wasn’t like she’d actually timed how long she could hold her breath in her last physical. Most of the doctors had been more worried about secondary mutations or potentially feral mind states showing up then really getting the measure of what she could and couldn’t do as a BOW.

“Or an SBOW.” The terminology was, in her opinion, kept intentionally vague. Likely so they could shift one to the other as needed and when it became expedient. She was certain that a number of nations currently beset by modern bio-weapon issues weren’t interested in inviting a humanitarian crisis over the latest disaster when they could just shoot and burn anything that didn’t look human. While at the same time Jill had heard of a rumor (through Chris of course, not like most anyone else really talked to her these days) that Russian contacts had been pushing for some interesting new laws in the hopes of recategorizing some of their bioweapons into the new, and increasingly more photogenic, SBOW category.

Any use of a BOW that was fully approved could cause international outrage, but the whole SBOW was still a legal gray area. Did they count as people still or merely an intelligent weapon’s system?

Hell, half the signatories for the BSAA weren’t sure how they should classify Jill herself.

It was thoughts like these, maddeningly circular in how they repeated, that flitted through her mind as the pain in her limbs became more notable and the pounding of her heart ever louder. If she didn’t find some way out soon she’d have to-

It was a pinprick sensation to the left, so minute she almost missed it, but Jill’s head turned that way, the gray color snout that was the tip of her face poking further out of her hood as her jaws opened. The foul water flowing over her tongue as she began to turn away, only for that same feeling again. Like she could feel something that way. The flare did little, almost a dull ember of bioluminescence no matter how she shook it. Shoddy manufacture and probably the European BSAA going for the lowest bidder once more. But guided by this strange feeling she turned and felt the passage split. One direction continuing onward, further into the dark, dead, water. And the other rising up, not far and not fast, but enough that she was certain that even if there wasn’t an exit that way at least there might be some air.

She half swam, tail swaying behind her as her feet thudded against the floor. Coming out of the water and gasping for breath, her jaws wide.

Only to gag at the putrid smell.

Oxygen yes, but something else. A strange metallic odor that hung heavily as she rose out of the water and saw the still blinking red light above another door, not quite shut entirely and opened a crack. Her dark eyes adjusted as best they could, while she dropped the spent flare to the floor and stepped out of the water, shaking her body as her gills opened and closed in the air, trying to free herself of the taste of that so-called swim she’d just taken.

Webbed claws ran over the metal sign next to the door, but between the muted colors of the solitary warning light and her own lack of familiarity in Russian she couldn’t begin to guess where she was.

Still, if there was still power here she had to be closer to the old base, as otherwise they’d probably have cut off the systems from disuse by now.

The door opened before her, slowly, with a sound of rusted metal angrily complaining at her disturbance. When it was at last open she stepped in.

And immediately regretted it. The floor was soggy and wet, even more stagnant and foul smelling than what she’d just swam through. But with no other options she pressed on. Soon both feet almost ankle, or what count as one for her, deep in the liquid. Her tail followed as well, though she repressed as a shudder at how slimy it felt on that limb. Bad enough how her human mind still had trouble fully accepting an entirely new limb she was now forcing it to touch all sorts of unpleasant things when before the worst she's dealt with was tangling herself up in her bedsheets and ruining another set in a tantrum of claws and limbs.

“What the hell is this?”

Rows of old metal folding chairs sat in the water, an over turned projector on one side long since ruined among the filth. Posters and diagrams had been placed onto some of the walls, but mildew and mold from the busted pipes and moisture had seen fit to utterly erase whatever they might have contained. She moved past them, careful not to disturb them as she came over to an old glass dividing window between two rooms. Shattered, the shards strewn about in the water under foot and crunching as she stepped onto them. Another red warning light blinking in the room on the other side, an examination table marred by innumerable stains lit in that hellish red glow.

Heavy leather straps lay empty, oddly discolored while about it oversized lights sat on poles pointed towards the table. The lenses were oddly box shaped, and black…

She had a bad feeling about this.

But the side rooms so far only turned into more hastily emptied storage or rows of long overturned and waterlogged filing cabinets. She was forced to press on for lack of options down the hall, towards yet another door. The light here broken, leaving her own shadow cast forward from behind as she approached it. Grabbing onto the handle and pushing it in, revealing yet another long undisturbed chamber.

“God, what is that stench?” It was even worse now, making her wonder if there was an equivalent for feeling goosebumps when you basically didn’t have body hair anymore. Her stomach felt unsettled and she seemed to have an instinctual desire to both bare her teeth and to keep her jaw firmly shut at the same time. Every sense she had, new and old, screamed at her that something was wrong. And combined with her experience she felt her clawed hand reaching for a pistol that wasn’t there.

Her eyes adjusted slowly, seeing something in that darkness.

Something moving .

Her hood felt like instinctively coming down, as she seemed to sense what was ahead of her even in this utterly lightless void. But she held it at bay, a morbid human curiosity fighting the likely more rational (at the moment) instincts of her SBOW state to prepare for whatever was to come. Jill pulled the last flare from her pouch and snapped it between her claws. Shaking it into full illumination.

“What the…”

Revealing hell.

The floors, the walls, the ceiling… all were dripping with viscous red fluid. The water stagnant and streaked with grime and filth, slight bubbles of noxious decay rising up as all was rendered into rot and then consumed again in an endlessly repetition of death and rebirth in a terrarium of putrescence. But more awful than that was what moved before her.

The walls were lined with body drawers like a morgue, or perhaps an older research hospital. The lettering faded, but even now she could see the odd warning symbols and stark coloring that painted over them. Many were sealed… but some were not. Forced open by the fleshy growth from within, bones meat protruding outward and pushing the hinges off. But the motion came from the centerpiece of this horror. A body, still sealed in a heavy reflective body bag, the silvered insulation long sense tarred dirty black. Writhing like a worm on the stretcher as if it could sense her much as she had seemed to sense it even in the darkness. She stepped back, but stopped at strange resistance and-

Pain?

She looked down, jaw opening in shock at the sight of fleshy wriggling tendrils trying, and at times succeeding in biting into her feet. The armored cartilage provided a measure of resistance, but not enough to fully prevent the pained stinging sensation of a layer of her skin peeling off as she leaped back.

A curse died on her lips as the creature crashed to the floor, twisting up and back, as if its spine was long sense erased or reconfigured into something else. The head blossomed within the bag, human shape deforming into a conical protrusion that pushed outward and towards her.

Jill turned and ran, not bothering to close the door as she did.

Perhaps she should have.

Something shot out of its ‘mouth’, a long whip of meat that almost speared through her. Instead wrapping around her left arm as she ran. Jill felt the weight pulled along with her, even as it tugged on her. Not to pull her towards it.

But to pull itself towards her.

She leaped into the examination room, through the unbroken window, the glass shattering around her as she did. Grabbing onto the tentacle and slamming it against the sharpened edges and using it to saw through the meat. Perhaps, had she been willing, her teeth would have worked faster. But the smell of this thing was repugnant enough.

The taste was likely worse.

“Come on… come on!” She could feel it drawing closer, hear it dragging itself down the hall. The long dormant cocoon about to burst open before.

It came loose at last, Jill falling back, the filth about her causing her to slip. One of the lights fell down, snapping loose form wires connected to long dormant batteries. It hit the side of the wall, breaking as it did. The thing on the other side rose up, a strange and awful sound like a massive, gurgling stomach coming from it as she grabbed onto something to keep from plunging into that noxious liquid below.

And grabbing onto an oversized breaker switch.

It pulled down, the lights in the room coming on, deep and painfully violet colors.

As the water began to burn and smoke where it shined. The smell was even worse, burning meat filling the air as her hood came down at last. Just as that smoke turned to flames, the air ripe for purification.

“The light… burns it?” She grabbed onto the lamp, experimentally holding her foot underneath it. A pained growl from the depths of her throat as her flesh smoked and burned at the point of contact, but swiftly leaving as the invaders attempting to overpower her own regeneration were expunged and her body’s natural state exerted itself.

The creature rose above the window, the body pag tearing at the seams, though Jill only sensed it’s motion and growing mass.

And pointed the light upon it. Bathing it in purifying incandescence. It soundlessly writhed in pain, trying to retreat, but she moved forward, breaking the light off of its pole and pointing it down the hallway. The walls and ceiling set aflame as everything began to burn.

Till the smoke and flames reached the morgue and there was a flash of light.

------

The access tunnel cover was frozen shut. Or had been.

But first smoke and then flames licked at it from below. Before that, a putrid smelling black smoke began to pour out from under ground in a dozen different spots across Heimfest, growing thicker as one approached the old military base. Until there was a cacophony of sounds and the metallic door blasted open, the smoke and fire pouring out for a moment.

And a strange creature rising out. Skin marred, gray turned red from fire and and worse, though now healing. It crawled out, finding a nearby snowbank and falling into it, rolling in the cold embrace of the frozen water. A armored hood of flesh pulled back as jet black eyes gazed towards the heavens and a row of fangs showed, deep panting breaths through its mouth. Clothed in a torn and now burned wetsuit, strange and perhaps vestigial markers of once human femininity showing in figure and composition.

Though her words were perhaps the most telling aspect of her character.

“Goddamnit Jill,” she said, placing a webbed hand at her face and rubbing it across her snout. “Why do you always pick the worst possible way into a place?”

------

Documentation on the Saint Petersburg Incident

Varya Savelievna, GRU Special Investigator

On XXXX-XX-XX, security alarms were triggered in the secured documents and materials wing of the old GRU facility. At first suspected to be malfunction of wiring or possibly a false positive from vermin which had begun to infest the building, a security guard was dispatched from the sole functioning watch post at the far end of the complex.

Their body was later discovered by the second guard forty minutes later. Death appeared to result from blood loss sustained by injuries to the neck. A knife was suspected at first, but coronary reports concluded that the width and penetration did not match leading to our current suspicion that a pincer-like tool or blade tipped gloves might have been used.

Following the determination of the lost materials other possibilities seem more likely.

An unknown number of documents concerning bio-weapons research and the enhanced soldier program from the prior regime were missing. No material components were kept at the facility for obvious reasons, but given the age of the documents and their nature, duplicates and electronic archives were not created during the transition over the last decade.

While I am aware that we have shelved these interests and current implementation of the Progenitor techniques, the fact that an unknown party deployed a possible BOW asset inside our territory to retrieve or remove these files from our records is deeply troubling.

I advise that we consider activating current assets at more important locations so as to prevent a repeat of this incident with matters of greater consequence.

Chapter 7: Chapter 6

Summary:

Jill encounters a hypothetical...
Who would win: A shark or a shark-sized...

Chapter Text

The storm had started to come in, light flakes of snow landing on the light gray of her nose. The burns from the heat and explosions had already faded away, though her clothing had new scorch marks and stank of smoke and the odorous fuel that had ignited below. Jill wasn’t that thick skinned or adapted to the cold, but after what she’d endured rolling into the snowbank at the far side of the mostly empty lot felt like heaven. The dull aches numbed by the melting snow as she partially rubbed it against some parts of her body, even her gills opening and closing so the icy water could flow through her and purge the taint of what she had found beneath Heimfest. The carapace hood of flesh tugged down just below her eyes as her breath slowed, the itching and tightening of regrowing flesh fading into the background for one blissful moment.

Jill pushed forward, sliding along the ground and stretching out as far as she could, her tail idly swaying from side to side as she did. Maybe it was exhaustion and that hard fall after the adrenaline and panic burned out, but right now all she wanted to do was lay right where she was. Hell, the cold and nearly freezing water and quite frozen slush actually felt good on her closing wounds and still sore muscles.

“Maybe I should try this some other time?” Jill’s tail flicked to one side, the fins regrown from where that noxious fluid had been trying to digest or convert her before and tingling at the fresh sensation of the cold air. That was an odd thought, one that had her letting out a sharp breath somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

Apparently she’d become a fish with a preference for cold water and not even noticed it.

“Barry would probably have some dumb joke about this…”

A Jill-sicle?

‘Careful you don’t end up in the frozen seafood aisle.’

‘Didn’t know you had a halibut for skinny dipping in ice water.’

Of course that was just his own habit as it were when dealing with stress. And there had been a lot in those early days before Raccoon. When they’d all still been trying to compartmentalize and get a handle on what they’d seen and done to survive. Before it all happened again, a thousand times worse. And then kept on going, dragging them further into scarier and darker world. One whose depths even now yawned beneath Jill like chasms with now bottom.

One she’d been pulled so far down into, she had no idea if she could ever swim back to the surface. Or would even know how to do so if she tried.

Her still and slowing heart beat no longer pounded in her skull, so she heard a droning hum approach. Jill’s eyes peaked out under the blue-gray fleshy armor, shiny and black. There was nowhere to run, least not without getting seen by the spy drone flying overhead. So without a second’s thought she rolled over twice, burrowing into the snow around her and welcoming the cold embrace about her. Her wounds had closed before she’d even climbed out from that tight and smoky drainage tunnel, guided by a strange sixth sense that worked in utter darkness and even now she wasn’t quite sure how to describe. But for the moment she had other concerns. Such as covering her body, from tip to tail, in as much of the snow about her as she could. The lights didn’t reach this far, not towards the back end of the lot where they must have piled up the snowbank prior to the virus’s outbreak.

Such that when she wormed only the very tip of her face, nostrils tickled by a few stray flakes of snowfall, there was very little sign of Jill Valentine to be seen.

The drone’s flight went over, passing into the distance and then back again. Long, slow, circles over the area. She wondered how long whoever was controlling it would keep up the search.

Other sounds, approaching from the road that led out of town and up to the old mine gradually grew louder. In the stark silence of perpetual night, Jill could discern the soft crunch of snow and gravel underfoot.

Or under feet as it were, as a small group passed by the chain link fence near her hiding spot. She didn’t dare turn her head towards them, but the sounds faded a bit as they moved towards the open gate and into the main lot between Heimfest and a few dilapidated and truly ancient buildings at the outskirts of the old military base.

“What the hell is all this?”

The outburst was loud enough that Jill heard it easily and clearly. Unaccented English, as American as her own, coming from a tall figure covered head to toe in gray-white winter camouflage hooded jacket. They pointed around at the flaming spouts of smoke that continued to pour out from underground, brushing at their face as they got a good whiff of the foul odor that tainted them.

“Maybe a gas line burst down there? This whole shitheap’s basically being held together by sticks and tape at this point?”

“But why now Carter?” the tall one said, turning towards the shorter woman that had spoken. Only for her coat to bulge out, an arm under it pointing at him angrily as he stepped back.

“For fucks sake, use codenames! Skadi . Call me Skadi while we’re on the mission Kari .”

“Quiet you two. You can get back to flirting after we finish this op.” The third spoke at last, almost as tall but broader looking that Kari or Carter-

“Skadi?!” Jill’s mind raced back to that stabbing pain from before. She’d heard that name, that voice, just before she’d been rendered unconscious and almost dead. Was this them?

The true murderers that had eliminated the BSAA agents back on the island and left her for dead?

“Something crawled out from here.”

“Checking thermals sir,” Kari said, looking around the area slowly, placing hand under their hood as they did. An eerie green glow emanated from under the hood as whatever gear they were wearing beneath their jackets was pointed towards Jill’s hiding spot for a moment. She held her breath, still as a corpse and stared back. She couldn’t dare move or retreat further, even sliding her fleshy covering fully down would give her presence away at this point. But her fears were unfounded as a moment later he turned away, continuing to scan the entire empty lot.

“No good. It’s all cold and dead. Only heat signatures other than us are coming from underground, and that could be masking whatever got out.”

“The reports said that they’d terminated their test subjects before they pulled out.”

“This was a decade before Raccoon, Skadi. They probably didn’t even understand what they’d found at the time.”

“What did they find-”

Something roared, guttural and deep. Not at the entrance Jill had swam through, but further towards the old barracks. The vent there bellowing more acrid smoke as the ground shook and the vibration traveled all the way to Jill’s hiding spot.

“Firing positions! Skadi, point, Kari, set up for target immobilization.”

“Understood Surtr!”

“Got you covered Sir,” Kari said, pulling out an oversized rifle that had been slung under his cloak. Armored gloves tugged the firing stand down as he crotched low, snow boots loudly pushing back on the ground as he fell prone and aimed towards the disturbance. Skadi for her part pulled out an SMG and moved to the side as their leader went to the other. The sound redoubled in volume, whatever Jill had stirred up soon to make its appearance.

The ground shook as the far side of the lot exploded upward, smoke and flames bellowing outward. Partly covering the mass of meat and bone that rose out of the ground. Tendrils of flesh supporting its bulk, the amalgamation of an untold number of bodies which had slowly festered in that sealed crypt for years. With their nest disturbed they’d rushed out, spreading into the less hospitable frozen surface. Whether merely instinctual reaction to pain or some perverse form of territorial drive inherited and mutated down the line from the, likely, primate source of most of the biomass was unknowable.

Jill was an expert at killing these things, not analyzing them for the labs and papers that came later.

Which was why she moved forward slightly, unable to keep her surprise showing on her face, her hood tugged back almost entirely as the blue light came from the rifle.

“It can’t be…”

The report of Skadi’s guns echoed across the lot, filling the eternal night with sound and light. The abomination responded in kind, guttural screams of pain or merely the reaction of its body moving which showed that it would at least respond to injuries, even minor ones, in a predictable manner.

Predictability was not what was needed, as the weapon’s charge reached its zenith and the recoil pushed Kari back slightly and Jill felt her tongue go numb, an odd pressure flowing through her for the briefest seconds. Not unlike what she’d felt when trying to swim and crawl through the suffocating blackness beneath Heimfest.

That was merely the side effect of firing a Mark IV Particle Rifle , the overpowered magnetic coil gun impacting the BOW with a force more like supersonic tank shot than anything else. The center of its body evaporated, flesh melted away by nothing more than overwhelming concussive force. The cored out carcass dropped to the ground, still writing about. Behind it the barracks exploded, every window shattering and a gout of flames coming out one end bits of metal and debris continued on into the distance. Alarms sang out into the night, a dirge for this thing's death.

For the third, likely their leader, tossed high temp anti-BOW incendiary grenades into the mass of meat before it could even begin the token effort of regenerating. The explosion and flames consumed and continued to consume its body, fuel that would burn under water and hot enough to melt steel destroying enough of its body that there would be no return for this nameless horror.

Though Jill was more focused on the trio before her, putting their weapons away and coming back together a safe distance from the smoldering corpse.

“That was a high-end Anti-BOW weapon.” No one else was even allowed to use those, the very same laws that had seen them put into place as a last resort measure making clear what an atrocious war crime it would be to pull it out in other circumstances. So far the difficulty in use and maintenance, combined with the gross overkill of such a device against any normal human target, had kept that law easily enforced. But these were not BSAA agents, and she’d been told that there were maybe four of those in Europe, and all on field deployment through the Middle East and up in Poland. Her jaw tightened as she sunk down into the snow, thoughts burning with new questions. “Where the hell did they get one of those? And the rest of their gear? Thermal optics, BOW-grade phosphorous grenades… who are these people?”

“That didn’t get out on its own.”

“Sir?”

“Think Skadi. Someone must have tried to sneak through the tunnels underground while we were planting those charges in the mine.”

“So what Conner-”

Kari was swiftly grabbed, pulled almost off his feet. No easy feat given he had to weigh at least a hundred kilos before counting the equipment and the powerpack for the railgun.

“Skadi and you can have your little game during missions, but remember I am your commander until I say otherwise,” he said, letting go as Kari stepped back, rubbing around his throat and shifting something on his back as he did so. “So remember that and stop acting like damn rookies.”

“Sir.”

“Do you think there was a survivor?”

“No one that should have mattered, and anyone that comes looking would probably be glad we sterilized this place by then.” He turned around, looking into the darkness near Jill’s hiding spot. Eyes shining red in the dark, a pair of angry crimson points under his hood.

Jill’s breath froze, her heart beating fast-

- Wesker looked down at her on the examination table, his sunglasses off for a change as he rubbed the side of her face, her new face. Fingers feeling how her skin had warped, bones pushing out and changing her features into something animalistic, predatory.

Inhuman.

“You look so wonderful like this Valentine,” taking pride in his mistake, his mutilation and mutation of her being. “So much power and potential hidden inside of you…”

He forced her jaw open, pressing a finger on one of her teeth. She couldn’t bite because she hadn’t been told she could, but still she tasted his blood, if only for a moment.

“Just a little longer… and then the world-”

- she shuddered, eyes closed to the world as the memories flowed over her.

“Sir, are you sure about that?”

The conversation had continued, and taken an odd turn.

“I’d bet on it. We might need to move to the backup plan,” he said as he turned back towards his subordinates. “Jill Valentine could still be alive.”

------

Jill didn’t dare move for almost another thirty minutes. She had plenty to keep her mind busy in that terrible tedium, even if the relaxing qualities of her impromptu snow bath were now a distant memory.

Whoever this small group of mercenaries were, whatever their purpose for being in the Arctic Ocean at the same time as herself, they were her enemy. And they were equipped to do so. Overly so in some ways. The crumbling ruins of the old Soviet barracks at the far side and the smoking pool of bubbling, boiling meat that had been living in that rancid hell beneath Heimfest gave ample proof of that.

Moreover they were, despite being conventional foes, far more dangerous to her than most zombies or BOWs or as of yet unclassified creations of twisted biomedical science. She was used to those, perhaps too used to them. Evil and cruel human minds, the ones that had created or unleashed such things were another matter. Even the most persistent and advanced BOWs she’d ever faced lacked a certain capacity for problem solving or ingenuity, and most were little better than the corpses they looked like in problem solving. They’d stopped being a legitimate threat to her long before she’d realized she was immune to most of their pathogens.

Before she’d learned to kill them so efficiently that she’d earned respect and admiration the world over as one of the top agents of the newly founded BSAA even in the short time she’d been able to serve there.

(And before Wesker had turned her into one of those very same monsters…)

“This is pointless,” Jill thought, rising out of the snow as she felt her mind wandered back into those dark circles that never gave her any easy answers. The half-melted slush dripped from her body, which still felt oddly better than the frigid air around. Her regrown toes, or at least portions of them flexed the clawed tips of her feet and her tail rose up and shifted as she stretched it out as far as she could and worked a kink out of bones and muscles that were becoming disturbingly not alien to her the longer they were part of her body.

It seemed like you could get used to almost anything in enough time.

Time though was, at least at the moment, something Jill did not have in abundance.

The armored hood pulled back entirely and a bare toothed frown stretched across her face as she turned her gaze towards the still blinking lights of that old radio tower. She had maybe eight hours at most before the BSAA turned up, probably less than four before their pickup ride took off to find the dead and the bureaucrats that had been itching to have her killed and dissected before Chris Redfield had quite literally threatened to tear the place apart got their way.

Not much time, and certainly cutting it close when she had to take care to avoid being spotted by that trio and whatever drones or security they might have in play.

“They probably don’t have much beyond the drones… especially not if they’re shooting a Mark IV around like that.” The base would have had ancient and derelict equipment anyway, and given this teams propensity for Anti-BOW tech on the very edge of feasible deployment she rather doubted they’d gone to the trouble of making sure a forty year old camera system was up and running let alone dedicating another member of their team to watch it. Obviously they’d have the drones and if any of them saw her first they’d tell the rest. Jill thought over it a bit more as she moved around the edge of the lot, avoiding both the dead unclassified BOW and the smoldering flames still bellowing out dirty smoke. “I wouldn’t expect a lot of motion sensors or anti-personnel munitions either. They probably thought they’d cleared Heimfest out by the sound of it.”

Which was fine by her.

It meant she didn’t have to worry about anything but moving in quick, efficient bursts while keeping eyes on the sky and listening for the telltale sound of the drone if it was nearing her. Between the cramped buildings ahead she’d have an easy approach towards the tower. Crouched down and peaking out around corners she was almost invisible, the dull gray and blacks of her body, especially from looking from above or behind blending in naturally with the shadows and darkly shrouded architecture around her. Even if they did pull out a thermal scope to try and track her, she was still covered in bits of frost or snow and her wetsuit was holding a fair amount of the icy water next to her skin. You’d have to be pretty close to see any heat from her, and even then it would most likely have been just her face and a bit of her upper chest to neck where the wetsuit wasn’t closed up that would have shown as anything notable.

Confidence in her surprisingly effective organic camouflage drove her on at a faster pace, snow crunching under clawed and webbed feet in quick, fast, bursts. Jill would peek her face out, the tip of gray nostrils, a shark faced snout, and then the black of her eyes peering down one lonesome and snow covered path. Before darting forward, only the odd prints of her feet left in her passage a moment later as she reached the next hiding spot, her back towards the sky and any possible watcher from above as you looked for the next place to run to. Thankfully she could avoid the larger open areas and the old storehouses next to the abandoned airfield. She idly wondered if they’d planned to set up missiles or merely use it as a forward base for monitoring the Arctic back during the Cold War, at least before they’d found whatever biological horror had led to them abandoning the whole thing and covering it up as best they could.

Not that that mattered now. Bioweapons (like herself according to some) were becoming the new focus of everything from WMD treaties to terrorism. The question was no longer worries about fictitious suitcase nukes or managing to get enough material for a dirty bomb, but if one of the increasingly terrible menagerie of weaponized retroviruses was going to end up deployed. With the weaponized variants, fully controlled Smart-BOWs now on the market and in use in most war zones on at least four continents at the moment. Treatments and vaccines only did so much unless administered before infection or very shortly after.

The rest…

Jill looked at her hand, the clawed tips of less fingers than she should have and the gray webbing between them.

“The rest might only be so lucky.”

But at least for now she was feeling like fortune was certainly on her side. No one had spotted her, the drone patrol taking a more circuitous route that she’d avoided entirely (and they seemed to have only the one here at Heimfest). The path up to the old radio tower was open, but between her strength, surprisingly resilience to the cold and snow, and the same claws she’d been staring at a moment ago Jill could take a more direct route, between rocky outcroppings and barren snow covered gravel that were furthermore covered in an utter darkness.

That strange… sense around her returned as there was barely enough light to make out the ground. It wasn’t like she could see it, but more that she just seemed vaguely aware of ‘large shape here’ and ‘heavy thing there’. The particle rifle had been white hot rod pressed against these senses, but she’d felt them clearly below. Running in long threads down the passage as she’d swam too and from that nightmare…

“The wires,” Jill thought, feeling it again as she passed over something and felt a sudden surge of awareness just below the ground. She pressed her body low, her face almost digging into the snow as she inhaled nothing, but still sensed presence tingling in the back of her nostrils right beneath her. Not smell but a new and utterly foreign sense that defied her human categorization and which she’d never really noticed until now.

Suddenly the annoyance of, and difficulty she’d had sleeping for months when all that equipment had been hooked up to her made sense. It hadn’t just been waking into the living nightmare of her new body or the troubled dreams of the far worse memories as Wesker’s slave.

She’d literally been kept awake by the fire in every wire connected to her, feeling that constant thrum of activity surrounding her, needling her, never stopping till she’d finally just gotten used to it and collapsed into dreamless and exhausted sleep.

There was no need for a path, no need to even look up and regain her bearings. Jill streaked across the snow, a blue-gray blur of indeterminate motion from on high, and barely that. Tasting the live wire underground and following its path right up to where it blazed brighter and closer, out of the ground through a plastic pipe and wrapping around the metal leg of the radio tower at last.

“Alright, now I just need to get this working.”

At the very least she knew it was powered, not just battery operated emergency lights. She could still taste/smell the wire as she tried to quietly climb the stairs upwards to the next level. Only a single old padlock stood in her way, and that rusted and frost covered obstruction lasted no longer against her claws than the last one did.

The creaking and swaying of the tower itself smothered the sound of her body as the storm from before continued to blow through. Clouds covering the stars and the northern lights, what little illumination visible coming from the lights in the valley below and the red glare of the few live on the tower itself.

Jill reached a ladder and began her ascent in earnest. Only another ten meters or so before the partially enclosed level where the equipment had been kept. At one time it might have been possible to operate it from lower down, but by herself and with so much torn out or replaced she’d need to make use of the last systems kept on, those that were part of the transmitter and receiver at this level and would have been more trouble than it was worth to take apart when they’d abandoned the base. Thankfully the power still ran to them, so all she needed to-

Her hand froze at the next rung of the ladder. She’d heard something… another odd creak or sway of the tower? It was nearby certainly.

The hood of armored cartilage sunk down as she moved up. It was probably nothing, it had to be nothing. She’d taken a direct route as much as she could, seen no signs of anyone else and the door itself had still been locked shut when she’d arrived. “Keep it together Jill… there’s no one here but you.”

She stepped out onto the last, non-maintenance level of the radio tower, turning towards the controls and froze. A figure was there, cloaked and hooded and staring out into the darkness, one hand about the cold metal railing. Thoughts of how they could have possibly beaten her to the tower raced through her mind.

Much as the nervous tension made her tail do as tails did.

And the finned tip knocked against a small stool, precariously placed with an old toolbox sitting on top of it. The sound of it falling, wrench and hammer and so many bolts cascading down and onto the metal floors below them one by one set off a cacophony of noise. They turned, reaching for their gun by instinct before realizing what it was and how close it was at that.

Jill couldn’t be more than two meters from them with not much more than that to move around. And Kari, the particle rifle he’d been reaching for, seemed ill prepared for such a fight.

“Shit,” he’d said, a short and quick statement that summarized how things were likely to go. He’d already reached under his hood, likely to turn on the radio attached to whatever armored operations mask he was wearing both for the weather and the still glowing low light system powered on underneath it. But Jill was faster, grabbing at his arm and wrenching down. Her strength and CQC training enough to snap a man’s limb with ease.

Or so she’d have thought, but her opponent moved with her, surprisingly quick in reaction and with equally notable strength. Not enough to escape her grasp but quick enough that she wasn’t able to dodge a bladed strike to her side a moment later. Followed by a quick kick at the same time that had her letting go more in surprise than injury, the short blade not hitting anything important and even if it had something like that wasn’t going to put her down anytime soon.

“Fine… fine, chance to gut a fish and show off my CQBZ training,” he said, face unreadable beneath the hood and the mask, but the extra long combat knife and almost gleeful tone of his voice carried the feelings just fine. Stepping warily to the side as he unclipped the power back from his back, his cloak shifting along his back as he did, and angling the machete sized blade downward for lower, faster strikes at Jill’s comparatively unprotected belly.

Jill’s claws were comparatively small, but no less fearsome as she crouched low, keeping up a defense against a weapon that couldn’t kill her easily on its own, but likely could cause injuries enough that it might give him the chance for a lucky strike and ensuring butchery needed to overwhelm her regeneration. Hell, she’d pulled the same trick herself on more than one BOW.

“Who are you assholes?” Jill asked, her tail hanging over the edge of the ladder behind her as she stepped back as far as she could, legs tensed and claws pressed against the metal floor. Ready to leap into an attack the moment she saw an opening.

“Paid too much to talk to some soon to be dead government lackey!” He lunged forward, a quick stab that was too fast for Jill to react to beyond doging back. Almost down the way she’d come, before she turned to the side and earned a slash at her side and back for her trouble. The cut on the front she’d expected, even if it stung and had her teeth showing in pain. But even the tougher plating along her back had been nicked from that passing exchange. He moved the blade from one hand to another, almost showing off his ambidexterity for some reason now that he’d managed first blood. “Don’t even need a gun for you… too slow and too big.”

He stabbed forth again, and once more proved shockingly quick as she lunged at him and only received a quick and sudden strike to her outstretched arm. Not enough to cut it off, but the deep slash almost hit bone through her skin and some of the cartilage armoring the sides. The serrated portion ripping flesh as it cut and the wound stinging even as it closed quickly.

“You’re pretty cocky,” Jill said, the armored flesh slipping almost over her eyes. She was either out of practice or not used to a smarter, faster enemy in this new body. No matter, she had more to rely on than just brute strength and flesh ripping claws.

Her mouth (and not just the razor filled maw part) might work here.

“Why not? You’re a relic of the past, just another bleeding heart BSAA that thinks we can go back before Raccoon.” The knife moved from one hand to the other, the showoff obviously gaining confidence the more of Jill’s blood he spilled. “Should have just died there instead of trying to put it back in the bottle.”

“At least I’m not a maggot feasting on the dead.”

That set him off for some reason, his body quaking with barely contained rage.

“I’m gonna fucking fillet you with my Z-knife you bitch!”

This time she was ready. His speed was entirely too much for some reason, but she didn’t need to dodge him. Just catch him. As soon as the knife went into her belly, through the wetsuit and deep enough she felt the tip strike the plates on her back her hands had already caught on to his arm. He’d realized his mistake a moment too late, trying to wrench back, but her grip was solid and she squeezed.

“Let go-”

She let the armor cartilage slip over, no longer needing to clearly see him and slammed her head against his. He pressed his feet down, kicking at her as she continued the assault. Sharp points from snowboots stabbing into her legs as she swung him from side to side. Into the support beam there, against the stairs leading to a power box over there. Pained cries coming out as the resilient mercenary kept tugging on the knife buried in her stomach. Finally she grew tired of it all and with all her strength ran towards the edge of the tower.

And let go.

Kari, knife and all, went flying out into the wind, the cry of pain and surprise quickly silenced by the fall.

Jill stepped back, putting a hand to her stomach, feeling the blood pour out for a bit before the wound stitched shut. Her mouth opened in pained expression as her body relaxed after the battle had ended.

“CQBZ training and a Z-knife?” Jill shook her head as she turned towards the radio controls at last. Who was that-

Something rattled across the floor, before detonating in a flash of sound and light that drove her back and almost off the tower herself. Covering her face she avoided taking a gunshot to the head as two large caliber pistol rounds struck her and Jill fell prone. Blinking away the spots in her eyes, she heard a slight buzzing sound and the impact of a body landing in front of her. The figure was silhouetted in red, casting an eerie glow over the wavering antenna that stood up from its head, mandibles open and then snapping shut as green glowing eyes stared down at her. An armored tactical vest, modified for the broad wide insectile wings sprouting from the back covered the chest, where more flash grenades and the now empty gun holster hung. The spiked chitin armoring the legs and arms was uncovered, though wet spots from her or… his blood could be seen. A short, stubby tail, tipped by pincer snapping angrily behind him completed the body as he took another step towards her, aiming the large caliber pistol down.

“Fine, we’ll do this the hard way.”

------

Z-Knife

The Z-Knife, or ‘Zombie Butcher’ was one of the many tools patented and produced for use in CQBZ (Close Quarters Quarantined Battle Zone) Combat. Ex-Umbrella Operator ‘Grim Reaper’ designed the oversized knife to rip and tear through re-animated and augmented flesh while damaging tissue to hamper regenerative properties. The composition of the metal was selected for non-hypoallergenic steel, an unusually high nickel composition as well.

As with most ‘Anti-BOW’ weapons, its use in combat zones and against human targets is under fierce debate and likely to remain curtailed for the foreseeable future.

Chapter 8: Chapter 7

Summary:

Jill escapes from Heimfest...
And finds new 'complications'.

Chapter Text

Jill was fast but he was faster. The next shot hit, if to the side, as she rolled over and her legs snapped around his foot. He tried to keep standing but she had more mass than him.

And a tail.

Against that number of advantages, Kari could only do so much. His mandibles opened wide as a pained hiss came out from landing poorly on his side and wings while he aimed the gun not at her chest or head but straight at her thigh. The explosion of pain and blood was more distracting than damaging as she came back to a low crouch, her weight on her other leg as the wound had already begun to close.

“Didn’t even manage to hit a bone.” With the bullet penetrating through it was only a distraction on her and not a crippling injury. But it had given him a few moments to step back and toss another grenade down. The flash and sound distracted her as he leaped back off the side of the building and into the storm

“Damn it!” Jill cursed as she rubbed at her eyes, the stinging pain quickly going away but leaving her alone once more. She let out a pained grunt, leaning against the railing as the bloodloss from the last few bullet holes hit her even after they’d sealed over.

She wasn’t invulnerable after all, just tougher and able to keep going till… till she couldn’t.

Maybe she’d wake up again, but something told her that after she’d survived that first attempt back on the island they wouldn’t take any chances. If she lost consciousness Kari would call his friends back and there definitely wouldn’t be enough of her left to get up again by the time they finished.

“I need something to put him down…”

Jill looked at her side where the speargun still hung. That was a possibility, but he was fast enough to dodge it unless he came too close. And it definitely wouldn’t hurt him enough to stop him.

If only she had a-

Her foot hit something as she stepped back and an idea began to form.

Jill dropped down, pumping the speargun’s air chamber as far as she dared. Cautiously she let the hood of armored cartilage heavy flesh that formed the armored covering along her back slip down fully over her face. Just the tip of her snout showed small puffs of warm air escaping as she moved in near total darkness. Relying entirely on this new sense. She felt the metal around her… was it the wires, or the fact that it was rich in iron and vaguely magnetic? She wasn’t sure, but she could tell the rough outline. Shapes, not substance. The control panels were blobby boxes, the pillars clear conical shapes stretching up. The floor was a flimsy membrane but she knew there was more substance and that it wouldn’t break beneath her. The wires showed bright, hot lines through her mind, and told her where the center was even as she turned to face each direction slowly.

All the while a switch she’d thrown a minute go made something else glow brighter and brighter.

With the wind blowing and the sway and creak of the structure itself she could hear anything. So she kept the gun close to her chest as she moved so her back was towards the central support beam, the dull thrum of the power line strangely a comfortable point of awareness in the abyss about her.

Something clattered to the floor, her head turning towards it even as she kept the hood down. The explosion was loud, yes, but she was used to it. The following flash of light was bright enough she perceived it, but she didn’t get distracted, instead dropping down as gunshots rang out towards where she’d been standing and she saw him.

It was a strange impression, body and proportions distorted, a faint and desperate shadow flickering through the dark and coming closer. The buzz of his wings was loud, but she saw the way those muscles burned, the nerves firing and faint against the man made sources behind and below her. But this urgent, living source was so much clearer now that she knew what it was. And instincts, strange and new yet somehow hers told her to strike. So she did.

A cry of pain turned into higher pitched hiss as the spear stabbed into him, and before he could fly away again Jill yanked hard on the cable and swung it around the central support beam while she reached down. The hood slipping past, her vision filling with an odd blue glow at what she grabbed.

“The fuck did you shot me with-oh no,” Kari said, landing on the side as he couldn’t fly and yank out the spear at the same time, the cable too taut and strong to let him dodge away. He grabbed at his gun and fired at Jill in response. Once, the bullet hit just above her eyes, where it bounced off the angled armor that covered her there. The next pull of the trigger came up with an empty click of finality.

Jill’s did not.

The recoil knocked her almost onto her back fin, her body shivering as her new senses throbbed with irritation at the strength of it. The battery pack gave short, arching through the metal and a smell of burning plastic filling the air. While one half of Kari fell forward onto the tower. The rest, did not.

“You… you mother-ugh,” he coughed, trying to crawl forward, the glow in his eyes dying as his tattered wings twitched on his back. He reached for another grenade, but the shock overcame everything else and he began to shake before rolling onto his back. He turned his head, trying to stare at Jill even as his mandibles started to go slack, jaw hanging open. Whatever he tried to say was lost, the blood loss cut up with everything else. Kari, whoever he’d really been before, had died.

Jill stood up, her legs shaky and partially supporting herself on her tail as she yanked the spear out of his chest and wound the cable back up. She felt exhausted, the adrenaline giving out at the last moment and practically collapsed against the radio console. Which she saw, with mournful dread, was now quite thoroughly dead.

“Of course.”

What was she thinking, firing something like that so close? The power was still running but she’d be lucky to get any of this to work. She’d need a new system, something she could actually work with and-

She ran over to the dead body, looking around his head. The radio headphone had been attached with straps and velcro, a makeshift effort given the lack of visible ears, but it was about the same thing Jill would have needed unless she wanted someone to surgically implant it. Looking down on the chest she found where the wires connected to the rest of the system and yanked it off. It was much more modern, a variation on what the BSAA and most any modern special forces would use.

And she could probably wire it into a bigger antenna just fine even if these forty year old consoles were all fried.

She just needed to-

“Kari, what the hell are you doing up there?”

Jill froze as the voice came over the speaker in her hand. That woman from before, one of the three she’d seen in the parking lot when she’d been hidden.

“Kari, this is Skadi, report. Why did you fire your weapon?” There was a lingering pause before she spoke again, “I swear Eric if you’re fucking with me I’ll-”

“Skadi, stop letting your emotions get in the way.” That was the last one, Surtr . Odd code names, but maybe they’d been selected just for this mission. “Kari, that shot didn’t hit anything on the ground… what were you aiming at?”

“Just ignore them and get to the radio.” Jill ran up those last few steps towards the sealed panel. Yanking it open and finding a mass of wires. Labeled in Russian of course. But she only needed to find a wire that led to the main antenna, and since these short range radios were already keyed to go through the signal denial it would be even easier.

“Valentine?”

Her claws froze, about to tug out a faded red wire that must have led to the antenna as she could vaguely feel how that one was connected to the bigger, lingering sensation that stretched up ahead of her into the sky.

“Valentine, I know it’s you.”

“What the fu-”

“Stand down Carter, that’s an order. I don’t need you going out of control after we lost Eric.”

She didn’t say anything, reaching for the wire again when he spoke through the radio.

“Ms. Valentine, respond or I’ll order this channel blocked and have that old piece of Soviet scrap you're hiding in blown all over the tundra.”

Her hand moved down, holding up the receiver to her mouth, taking a deep breath before she hit the button on the side. “Why the sudden interest in conversation?”

“Idle curiosity. I haven’t seen you since Fort Bragg, though I heard you changed up your look a bit since then.”

“Great, another psychopathic comedian.” Jill let out a sigh as she held the transmitter in one hand and pulled out wires with the other. “You were in Delta Force too?”

“A trainer there, I don’t think we ever met. But a woman, let alone one of your age, managing to complete the program was more than a little notable.”

“What a shame,” Jill said, a teeth bared wince as something shocked her as she tried to figure out which wires she’d need to pull and reconnect to make this crazy idea work. “You probably looked better back then too.”

A hiss and a chuckle before he spoke again. “I dunno, I think I make it work pretty well. In any case I wish you’d done the smart thing.”

“What, let you poison the world's oceans?”

“You really think that’s the plan? Honestly, I’m not surprised looking at your record… but no, we’re just the cleanup detail. Just to make sure that anything that wouldn’t burn up once the sun comes out or is more substantial is handled personally.”

“Why does that involve me?”

“Your… involvement was just a coincidence that the BSAA finally took notice. Hell, if it weren’t for some accidents no one would have ever noticed anything till Heimfest went up and that would have been blamed on shoddy engineering.”

“How does that make it better?”

“You should have just gone native for a bit after you shrugged off our meeting south, found some rock to hide under and enjoyed the… sushi,” he said with a laugh. “We both know those incompetents in the BSAA would have given up and you could have slipped stateside, this whole affair just another coverup and unsolved mystery for the tabloids at the supermarket.”

“And now what?”

“Now you killed one of my men,” he said, a dead, cold tone in his words. “And I’m going to have to make an example out of you.”

“How, boring me to death?” Jill saw a brief spark as the wires connected and she knew that her MacGyvered solution was ready to try. “Because, I’m sorry to say, I’ve dealt with worse.”

“South-west, approximately 230 degrees, six klicks.”

“What?”

“There’s a little cruise ship that’s received very reliable orders to move in that direction because the earlier quarantine warning was just a big accident. In two hours they will have sudden engine trouble. The radio will be inoperable, as you may have noticed. And thirty minutes after that there will be a BOW attack, a contagious and aggressive specimen of the T-Abyss will ultimately be determined to be the source.”

There was a pause, but Jill didn’t speak.

“There will be no survivors.”

“You bastard!”

“Of course, you could just go and hide, hell, even if I blew up this whole island you're tough enough and it’s not like it’s the first time you walked away from something you have no rights surviving. But those people will die, and I will make sure that the BSAA blames you for it. Maybe your friends back in DC can get you out of it eventually, hell the idiots in Paris probably won’t even find you even with all of Europe looking for your head, but all those people will die.”

“Shut up.”

He continued, ignoring her interruption, “They will die because you were just too stubborn to finally give up like you were supposed to.”

“I’m going to kill you for this.”

“I hope to see you try Valentine. Your CQC always looked a little sloppy.”

The transmission went dead.

Leaving Jill alone, with her thoughts, her regrets, and rather little options.

------

Svenn had waited patiently, or as patiently as he could with his uncle. After Agent Valentine had walked off they’d retrieved the old pistol and loaded it, but given the sort of nightmarish horrors that might come out of that darkness neither wanted to risk firing it until they absolutely had to. His uncle had paced the deck for some time, muttering about their bad luck, but neither wanted to risk leaving either.

The… woman… shark… shark-woman had made a convincing argument. And if they had wandered into this by accident there was no telling that they’d be so lucky to get out the other way without being noticed. Their boat was slow at the best of times, even if it was unloaded as they’d been forced to drop that contaminated fish back into the water.

He took a look over the side, the waves cold, black, and likely as tainted as the water further south. More so if the odd silence about Heimfest had anything to do with the infection they’d seen.

Of course the silence didn’t last.

“What in the…”

The gouts of flame and smoke from further up could be seen even down at their secluded part of the harbor. Soon after more sounds, loud gunfire and something like a cannon shot, echoed through the night followed by even further clouds of smoke and ash rising up into the night. The wind had begun to pick up by then, blowing the debris thankfully further north. Even as light snow began to fall they didn’t dare leave yet.

Whoever had set all that off had to be close, and this Valentine hadn’t been carrying anything that would have made such destruction.

Either she was dead already, or fighting something that thought they could take her. In either case Svenn’s uncle had no desire to start up their engine and draw the attention of those sorts down to where they were hiding at the moment. He even turned off the lantern and peered cautiously into the poorly lit docks, pistol in hand for all the good it would do if the six shots they had (and the six more they could load) weren’t enough to take it down.

Then they heard the sounds. Soft crunching of footfalls approaching down the docks. With their lights off they could only make out the vague figure of a person. It could be Valentine, if she was crouching down perhaps. No sound so far, but only one person. His uncle aimed the pistol at them, hand shaking for a moment before he stilled it and looked at Svenn. Nodding once, Svenn stood up, flashlight in hand and leaning around the side of their boat so he could shine it on whoever had come down to meet them.

He turned it on, illuminating the figure.

“What the hell? Are you trying to blind me?”

Svenn stared at his uncle, who pointed the gun away from the strange man wearing, of all things, an old military uniform with a snow jacket.

Of course that’s when another thunderous sound exploded, and a bolt of blue light and a gout of fire leapt from the radio tower and streaked off towards the north. The pistol discharged, thankfully not at the man but striking one of the lights further down the docks. A shower of sparks, more cursing, and all in utter darkness.

Save for Svenn’s flashlight.

“Stop, stop! We are all… human, yes?” Svenn asked, looking from the man, who as he came closer Svenn realized they stunk of liquor and… fish?

“Samuil is human. Only one left one whole shithole island now,” the newcomer said, the old Russian accent coloring his words. But at least they could both speak the same language, though his uncle was still looking warily from the boat.

“How did you survive Samuil?”

“Oh, just like last time.”

“Last time?”

------

Jill’s trip back to the docks wasn’t sneaky. At this point if they wanted to just kill her she’d already be dead. If you could afford to get a particle rifle (how still unanswered, the BSAA was supposed to keep a tight lock on those) you could get plenty of RPGs or explosive munitions. If this Surtr /Conner/former Delta Force member had wanted to, they certainly could have just blown up the whole hill where the radio tower was. Of course she might survive, but given how weak she was already feeling from being stabbed, exploded, stabbed, and shot some more, there was no telling if she’d be in any condition to do anything but gradually starve in the elements afterwards.

As silly as it was, Conner’s mocking joke about her ‘going native’ and having sushi was making her stomach growl as she ran down the streets and towards the docks at last. The flames from the still uncontrolled fires had spread to another building, and most of the old military base, or what of it that had been on the surface, was now burning down. All of which would have cloaked her sprint through those dead streets even if she thought anyone might still be looking for her.

She had the speargun still, the radio, though she doubted it would do any good since they would have changed their frequency by now and locked off the old one. The particle rifle’s battery pack had been damaged and she didn’t want to accidentally incinerate herself trying to fix a temperamental and frankly experimental weapon she’d only seen in diagrams before today.

“Not that they haven’t been around for a bit, but thanks to… Wesker, I wasn’t active in the BSAA when those things finally went into deployment.”

The lights were off at the docks as she approached, and for a moment Jill worried that she’d been abandoned. She might be able to get to the boat on her own, but she’d feel better if she could at least check in with the pair that had helped her earlier and make sure they knew which way to run.

The opposite of where she was about to go for one.

Sounds came from the boat, unsettling as she’d told them to keep quiet. But as she drew closer she made out voices, including laughter and her approach sped up as curiosity drove her on.

The lantern was low, while the trio of men sat around the steps of the boat. The oldest one hand heavy pistol in one hand, which he raised at her when he saw her step out of the shadows. It dropped down as shock went around the faces. Though Svenn calmed down quick enough… and Samuil, who had purloined another bottle by the looks of it, merely gave her a slight wave, before going back into his story.

“You came back Valentine,” Svenn said as he jumped up. Looking happy, a smile on his face that gradually went away as he noticed the new holes in her clothes and the bloody stains on parts of her body. “Did… did you contact the BSAA?”

“No. And it’s worse than that. I need to chart a course from here, directly southwest.”

“You found them.”

Jill looked down, seeing Samuil had turned away, staring at her intensely in the dim lantern light.

“The things underground. The ones that weren’t lucky and would never die…”

“They’re dead now.”

He nodded, taking another drink from his bottle as he fell into silence. Svenn’s uncle asked something and Svenn replied back quickly before turning towards Jill once more.

“Agent Valentine… do you need our help?”

“It could be dangerous.”

“Ha! It’s always dangerous,” Samuil said, rising unsteadily to his legs. He started to fall and Jill’s hands came out to catch him before she realized what she’d done. He grabbed on, hard to her right arm and looked up into her eyes. The human brown into her inhumanly jet black. “You are going after them, da ? The govnyuk that did this?”

She nodded slowly, her lips parting ever so slightly, the hint of teeth showing before she spoke again.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

------

They made good time. Very good, the boat’s engine running hot and fast. Lights killed, straight on course towards the location that Conner had given her. Till she saw the lights of a distant ship, much larger than the small fishing boat they were on currently. The only thing lit up under the dark gray sky or on that inky black horizon. She couldn’t miss it.

“I can take it from here,” Jill said, looking back at the pair of Norwegian fishermen and the lone survivor from Heimfest. The island itself had exploded into an even greater conflagration after they’d left, the mine itself the source now with the coal remaining in the storehouses only adding to it.

Without anyone to put it out there’d be nothing but ashes by morning, and no trace at all of what had happened there by the time the sun shined on that desolate rock once more in two months.

“Valentine,” Samuil said, who now looked surprisingly sober now that his bottle had run out and there were no more to be had. He looked down at the tin of sardines she’d rather completely destroyed, her hunger great enough that the foul smelling fish had tasted heavenly as she’d swallowed them whole. The last of his ‘stores’ he’d said, along with that one bottle he’d been carrying when he reached the docks. “You will get them for this.”

She nodded. Finally giving a thumb (or fin) up to the lot of them as she turned towards the water.

“You’ll head back, keeping the lights off and going opposite of all this?”

“Till we can’t see it and another ten kilometers after,” Svenn said.

Jill nodded, the carapace hood slipping down lower as she stared into the water. Her gills already opening and closing as she tasted the salt water spray in the air. She took one last breath of air… and leapt into that abyss.

The last words she heard before she hit the water, “Good luck rusalka!”

It was cold of course, bitterly so, but once more it felt good. Weirdly pleasant and almost natural as she swam. Her element now. Her legs deformed in places, the toe claws slipping in as the fins elongated and the digitigrade stance departed into something sleeker and even more aquatic. Of course she was thankful that it went away once she got back on land, but it was so strange to think her body responded like that. That even with how much she’d lost, somehow she’d maintained the control in places.

Her teeth bared as her tail lashed out. Thoughts of Wesker and his logic about how the virus had worked coming back. How he’d talked about unlocking potential.

How was her potential being a big humanoid fish? It didn’t make sense. But then very little of that long nightmare did.

But she’d woken up from it. Alive where so many had died, stronger when so many had been left weaker. Herself, despite it all.

And she wasn’t about to let a bunch of monsters that had been worthy of that name long before they’d grown wings and insectile mandibles take that away from her.

“I’ll get onto the boat… get the crew to the lifeboats and hopefully to safety while I handle whatever they have planned for me.” It wasn’t a good plan, but it was better than nothing. She’d thought about taking the gun from the boat, but it would have been too waterlogged by the time she finished her swim. At the very least she still had her speargun, her strength (with quick sardine pick-me-up) and they weren’t likely to pull anything as absurdly overkill as another particle cannon out anytime soon.

She reached the boat at last, the side of the vessel rising up before her. Seeing a rope leading down to buoys along the side she leaped up, claws snatching on and holding tight. Her lower finds slapped against the side, already starting to reform into legs as she pulled herself up. One of the lifeboats was just above her, she only had to keep climbing and she’d be onboard in a moment. The hood pulled back as she moved, her gills still flexing, her throat filled with salt water as she felt it pump out in slow, wet coughs. It would take a little while, but soon she’d be able to talk again.

It would be hard, but she would explain what had happened and-

“There she is!”

Jill rose up, frozen in shock almost a half-dozen lights shined on her. Through the glare she saw five figures. Black and blue combat armor, tactical vests brightly showing the BSAA logo on each one. Before one of their weapons discharged, the bullet striking just above her chest. She felt the round fragment into her throat as she grabbed onto the boat. More shots hit the support above, the rope snapping off and the boat half falling down with Jill attached to it. She swayed with it, down into a lower open deck and spilled onto the floor, coughing blood, salt water, and bits of lead and brass out as she heard the voices above.

“Goddamn it, Cascos! You were supposed to wait till I gave the order to shoot!”

“I’m sorry sir it won’t happen-”

“You’re damn right it won’t,” Grady shouted. “Now get going and find her before she finds the crew!”

------

BSAA Contact Records

“Come in… do you read me?”

“This is a secure channel for the BSAA. Please identify yourself?”

“Commander Quint Grady, BSAA Special Investigator.”

“Why aren’t you contacting us through your radio system?”

“Something went wrong after we landed. Agent Valentine… she lost her mind. Butchered the technicians and tried to eat them. I thought I’d killed her but I was wrong.”

“... Acknowledged. Why weren’t we notified earlier? You’ve been in the field for almost seven hours now.”

“She trashed the radio while on her rampage, I barely got out. Managed to flag down a passing ship that didn’t hear about the quarantine.”

“We’ll send out the helicopter to pick you up-”

“Negative. I told you, I only thought I killed Valentine-the T-Abyss BOW. She got up. And it’s still hunting me. She’s managed to trash the propeller somehow and has gone after any lifeboats we put down as well. We can’t risk getting in the water and I’m going to run out of ammunition before I take her down. Assuming she’s not contagious too.”

“Understood. What is your tactical assessment Commander Grady?”

“Get me response team out here ASAP, whoever you have… Barker’s should still be within range. I need them here on the double.”

“I’ve already put out the order.”

“Good. Let’s settle this mercy kill like we should have.”

Chapter 9: Chapter 8

Summary:

Sneak Shark, Sneak Shark...
Look out, it's Sneak Shark!

Chapter Text

“Anything to report?”

“Negative Captain.”

“Fine, but don’t forget we’re dealing with a BOW and an ex-agent. She- it will know how we plan to track and kill it. Don’t ignore that.”

The transmission cut off, leaving Agents Armando Cascos and Joanna Koprowska alone, one deck lower and cautiously moving forward, lights pointed ahead. Joanna’s short ponytail of dark brunette hair swayed back and forth as she quickly turned down one hall and then another checking for any sign of the rampaging BOW they’d injured above. Armando was kneeling down near the railing, rubbing his gloved fingers over something on the floor.

“She was here.”

Joanna fought the urge to roll her eyes, instead stepping to the side of her junior partner from Central Europe.

“Really Cascos? These more expert tracking skills for a Hunting Commando or is the fact that she must have leaked a pint of blood before the wound closed up?”

“It. Do not personalize the dead.”

“Oh god, he’s still doing it.” Armando might try and cut the appearance of a seasoned agent, the borderline regulation breaking facial hair part of that, but her role as a BSAA medic had gotten her the opportunity to look at the files for his operations. He’d never even encountered a proper BOW, merely dealing with the cleanup and elimination of Plagas infected and T-Virus 'cannibal syndrome’ victims. The big injury in his files he’d talked about earning during fight before had ultimately been caused by the structural instability of the building they’d been checking for zombies. She couldn’t quite keep her facial expression neutral, though Cascos was still busy looking down at the blood stain on the deck.

“She was one of the best agents we had. And thanks to you jumping the gun all we did was injure her instead of doing it quick and clean like we planned.” Her boot kicked a few of the shiny bits of metal in the blood to the side before she spoke again. “And stop touching that. If she’s actually contagious you don’t want to get her blood on you.”

Armando said something vulgar in German under his breath as he shook his hand, rubbing the sealed and waterproof glove along the floor next to him.

A sudden sound of creaking wood thudding against the ship drew their attention up. And then onto the lifeboat, rocking back and forth against the side of the ship. Lady Aurora was in that strange middle ground of overproduced, yet mostly fake luxury, that attracted regular tourists willing to overpay for wood panels and an old timey aesthetic stapled over a semi-modern ship. The lifeboat's appearance as something a century older, while being fairly normal aside, was part of that.

“That’s odd.”

“How so?”

Armando looked over the side, down to the rolling waves and then back up to the deck where they’d had their ambush prepared for Valentine when she came out of the ocean again. Turning back towards Joanna he made to stroke his chin, freezing as he noticed which hand was free and what it had been touching.

“Didn’t Commander Grady say something about the BOW taking out lifeboats?”

“What do you mean?”

“They all look to still be attached.”

------

“Damnation, she took out the captain already?”

“Gutted him like a fish and took him overboard,” Grady said as they walked around the bridge of the ship. Most of the controls looked torn up, either covered in thin spray of blood or bullet holes from the fire fight that had driven off Valentine the first time. After that he’d gotten the surviving crew to get the passengers down below decks and locked into their rooms. As long as they kept the main routes below deck sealed off they would be safe while they dealt with the aggressor coming from outside.

“And you couldn’t have aimed better?” Captain Barker asked, looking down at the inoperable consoles. Between this and the jammed engines, which he wasn’t sure how one mad mutated woman had managed without getting herself diced to pieces in the process, they were dead in the water. Only the helicopter they came in on which, while certainly able to get them back to the coast, certainly couldn’t carry the whole crew.

“I was having a bit of an issue not joining her last victim at the bottom of the ocean… or in her stomach.”

Anita felt the spent casings roll under her foot as she moved between the two taller men. The shorter blonde woman prying open the panel underneath. Her pale blue eyes narrowed at the sight that greeted her.

“Radio is not looking good sir.”

“We got one on the copter Agent Jacobs. Still, it’s good you got out that warning before she attacked again.” Barker stood up and walked over to the main window, broken at the moment, bits of glass strewn about the floor near them. He still looked out into the shadow-covered ocean as he asked, “Any idea what set her off?”

“Stress… possibly her latent instincts triggered by the environment. I should have known better than to approve a mission, let alone one near the ocean given the instability of the T-Abyss. I’ll take full responsibility for the deaths in my report. Handling Valentine if she went rogue was part of my responsibilities.”

“Nonesense, you couldn’t have known she was a ticking time bomb like that. Certainly we all suspected as much… just let our sympathies cloud our judgements.”

“Why’d she retreat?”

They turned to look at her, confusion clear on Barker’s face while Grady just looked back at her from the other side of the empty bridge.

“What do you mean Jacobs?”

“Well, if she’s gone feral, shouldn’t she just keep coming till you ran out of bullets or put her down? BOWs aren’t known for tactical retreats.”

“The ones you deal with most of the time you mean,” Grady said. “But I think Valentine isn’t all gone. More like her broken mind is pulling out the trauma from past events and replaying it. She probably thought the two she killed at the camp were zombies, the crew she attacked her the same. From what little she spoke between this I think she’s seeing me as someone she knew.”

“Who?”

Grady smiled a little before he said, “Well, don’t be surprised if she mutters something about Wesker before trying to rip out your throat with her teeth.”

Anita stiffened at that. A gloved hand went to her throat as she imagined what it would be like if Jill Valentine, the new Jill Valentine attacked her like that. She’d been one of the most formidable and famed agents prior to her transformation. The idea of that strength and skill warped, twisted, and set upon her with ferocity devoid of human restraints was an intimidating thought.

“Understood sir.”

------

“Nothing in the gym.”

“I checked the bathrooms and showers as well,” Joanna said as she came around back to her partner. “Still nothing on the motion sensors I’ve been putting down behind us.”

“Maybe you had to drop the sensitivity too much because we’re on a boat?”

“I know how to calibrate a security system,” Armando said, looking up from the tablet he was holding. “And if she- it was able to follow behind from those rooms she’d have to be some kind of sensor ghost.”

“Maybe the T-Abyss does that?”

“The T-Abyss turns you into a fish,” he replied, a dismissive wave of his hand as he said so. “There are odder viruses, yes, but this one isn’t notable for any traits like that. And our BOW stopped mutating months ago.”

“Maybe the stress that triggered her attacks has led to further physiological changes.”

“That is… possible,” Armando said at last, nodding slowly. “But we can not act like we do not have any baseline knowledge on what we hunt. At the very least, we know it bleeds…”

“Is he really going to?”

“... and if it bleeds we can kill it.”

Joanna bit down, hiding the grimace as she came around to the door leading into the dining hall. There other team members were moving from the opposite direction, hoping to flush the BOW into one or the other’s sights. She was hoping that they’d have a chance to just wait until they were told to move forward, but Cascos checked on his sensors again and the door itself before smiling a bit too proudly.

“Ha, just as I thought. The next room is clear.”

“How can you be so sure?”

An even smugger look crossed Cascos’s face as he pulled the panel he’d attached to the door down and slid it back into his pack. “A high frequency scanner we used for urban BOW pacification and search and rescue. With it I could even tell you how many chairs they had set up at the table for brunch. And there’s definitely no BOW in that room.”

“Don’t you think we should wait anyway?”

He’d already moved to open the door, motioning for her to take point on the left as they entered, for all the good it would do if the room was really empty. Still she pointed her gun and light in that direction, all the while hoping that at this Cascos was as good as he thought he was. As much as she wanted to just find Valentine and be done with this already, being the first to wander up on her set her on edge. She’d seen those bullets strike true, her throat ripped open by Anti-BOW rounds.

And there hadn’t been a body below, only the bullets themselves spat out with a mess of blood on the floor.

“What will it take to kill something like that?” She shuddered at the thought, as it connected to how that thing had been a person. One that would have preferred the merciful death they sought to give her, but which her own biology and now virus twisted mind, driven by primal and inhuman instincts now denied. It was bad enough that most BSAA agents had a conversation about ‘who would pull the trigger’ on them. But this? “What if one bullet is not enough?”

“See, I told you this room was-”

A sharp pop came from one side. There guns out a moment later, safeties off and before they could realize what it was a short burst of fire had sprayed out of Cascos’s weapon. A partially melted ice sculpture of a mermaid beheaded as another balloon nearby popped and the rest floated up and bounced against the ceiling.

“Cholerny! What are you doing?”

“I thought it-”

“Cascos! Koprowska,” their radios burst into activity. “Did you encounter the BOW?”

“Negative… a misfire.”

“Bloody hell,” Barker said over the crackling sound of the speaker. “Stop making a mess of this and handle it like professionals.”

“Yes sir.”

“Finish setting up the sensors around the dining room. We’re making sure she hasn’t snuck down to the lower decks where the passengers are hiding.”

With that they were left alone, Armando looking suitably embarrassed once more as he moved towards the errant display and now partially destroyed dining set up. “Shame most of the shrimps are going to waste.”

“Just focus on the mission,” Joanna said, turning back and looking at the kitchen set up. A large open grill for displaying what was being cooked next to more conventional ovens and a large walk-in freezer in the back. Probably more store rooms below, but this would be were they kept the majority of it. “Wonder how they get the food up here though. Do they take it up the passenger elevator or-”

Another sharp pop sound had her jumping slightly, hissing under her breath as she turned around. “Least you didn’t go shooting up the place this-”

Armando was gone.

The last motion sensor he’d been putting down blinking next to the stairway that led down to the next lower deck, the light to activate it timing down till it blinked on. The boat rocking from side to side as the waves picked up, and part of the broken ice sculpture tumbled down, falling to the floor and shattering into so many shards of frozen crystal against the maple colored floor.

“Agent Cascos?” She stepped towards where the sensor was, her boots crushing the ice underfoot, the sound too loud in the sudden silence. The clouds parted, letting the eerie glow of the sky shine through for a moment, passing just as quickly as she came to the stairwell and looked down.

The tablet he’d been monitoring with fallen halfway down the steps.

“Gówno!” Joanna grabbed at her radio pressing down on the button. Only to freeze as she heard something. The soft crunch of ice.

Behind her.

Then another, closer, louder. The pounding of her heart so loud that the next seemed muted as she dropped the radio and all sense of training. Pulling her weapon up as she turned, a scream at her lips.

Silenced as the cold and clammy claws of the creature grabbed at her throat. Before she had time to think about it, to realize the size of the beast, the BOW that had once been a comrade, pulled her weapon down with her attached to it, twisting the straps and making a makeshift noose that strangled further sounds from her. She managed to angle it towards the creature's soft belly, but found the trigger stubbornly refusing to engage. Realizing too late as it’s inhuman face drew near, the mouth opening and closing, showing fangs smeared with the indeterminate meat of some recent victim, that it- she had been smart enough still to press the safety down and then disengage the clip from her weapon at the same time. How such taloned hands could remain so deft or that monstrous creature could remember such skills Joanna did not know.

But at that moment it seemed so terribly unfair.

------

They didn’t realize anything was wrong for almost another fifteen minutes. The follow-up check Cascos and Koprowska came up unanswered. Barker cursed up a storm as they ran towards the bow of the ship where the main dining hall had been located. A couple curious faces peaked out from doors as they passed through the passenger decks, all the while Anita yelled at them to keep their doors closed and locked.

By the time they reached the ornate wooden doors to the stairs leading up to the dining hall, they’d been out of communication with almost half their team for a little over thirty minutes. Grady was on the right while Barker kicked the door in and rushed up, the light attached to the end of his shotgun illuminating the area. They swept in, Anita following behind, cautiously as she could. The floor above the steps was wet, bits of ice broken and melting into the floor. No immediate sign of anything was found. No blood, no spent bullet casings.

No bodies.

Until her foot hit a small object, causing it to roll across the floor and bump into the side of Grady’s boot. The senior agent slowly bent down, picking it up as her own squad commander came over and checked on what he found.

“It looks like an Anti-BOW round.”

It certainly did, the green band around the side marked with the rather obvious classification for the technically illegal fragmentation round. It wouldn’t do for these to end up used against people after all when they were meant to put down monsters.

Though the real question was why it was laying on the floor, unfired with no gun around for it.

“Did someone mess up trying to reload?” No that couldn’t be right, frowning as she looked from the lone bullet back to a rather lackluster amount of damage for a possible pitched battle with BOW of Agent Valentine’s… type . If they’d emptied a clip there’d be bullets and blood sprayed all over the place, not forgetting the amount of noise that would have been produced. But aside from the misfire that Cascos had talked about just before they’d disappeared there’d been no sounds of gunfire at all…

It was like the pair had just been gobbled up, guns and all.

A disturbing thought, given she’d only ever heard of Valentine’s appearance post-infection and seen a few reports about the now otherwise eliminated T-Abyss strain. Tricell had clamped down on it, and while they’d been part to their own host of human experimentation and bio-terror actions they’d kept the potentially catastrophic and uncontrollable variant of the Progenitor Viruses with its deep sea affinity from ending up in the rotation of black market weapons that the BSAA dealt with on the regular. T-Virus mutations, the Plagas now, and a few more exotic attempts to rework and manipulate those were most of what they saw. Thankfully nothing worse had been engineered as of yet, but given past experiences no one really believed that that luck would hold out indefinitely.

“Could she have?” She was supposedly larger now…

No, that was an absurd thought.

------

The creature's mouth stretched open, serrated teeth surrounding a maw unlike any human jaw as it bit down. Chunks of meat torn off as it closed, the juices of its attack dripping down the gray flesh and onto the paler throat, still marred by blisters of red where the flesh hadn’t regrown and veins stuck out, red and pulsing. Watching it-watching her try and keep the mess from falling further, onto her (in Joanna’s opinion anyway) unnecessarily tight and in parts revealing wetsuit made the whole scene all the more uncomfortable to watch. Not that she could do much else.

She’d been pulled down, bundled up and dragged into the back of the dining hall and through the fridge, only to find her earlier thoughts about possible service elevator hidden there to be correct. A tight, and with both of them gagged and tied with strips of cloth torn from the dining room tables they couldn’t even scream for help as they descended, the lights dimming leaving Cascos and her trapped an in enclosed space, the looming figure other amphibious BOW standing over them, crouched slightly while they lay on the floor.

She’d disarmed them both, of both their primary weapons and their backups and even checked her for hidden knives she might use to cut herself free. Leaving little in the way of possible escape methods. Even if they had a chance of dealing with her once they did get loose, considering the ease with which she had manhandled them once she got close.

Supposedly there were ways to combat the often overwhelming physical strengths of a BOW, but their training had been centered on avoiding that scenario, and only the suicidally brave or idiotic made a habit of getting within knife range of this modern menagerie of manmade horrors. Though at the moment she was rather disappointed that she’d never been able to train in CQBZ, as at least then she might have had some idea of how to respond to threatening Beyond Apex-Predator getting her webbed clawed hands on her and being within bite range.

At least a way to react beyond freezing up.

Like she was doing now, watching Jill Valentine gorge herself on the refrigerated ham she’d pulled from a shelf, sharing the occasional look with Cascos who was laid out on the floor opposite her. Both equally surprised by this odd event, but not interested in looking a gift horse, or shark, in the mouth and questioning why their BOW seemed more interested in raiding the ships food supplies than tearing their throats open.

“Maybe she’s storing us for later?” It would make sense, as they were in an area full of frozen and refrigerated food. But that was a damn odd instinctual behavior for a BOW, especially one which had come about from mixing the genetic lines of a variety of animals, not a one of which was none for putting of its appetite for long term gains. If anything she would have thought Valentine’s natural proclivity now would be to eat first, eat often, and ask questions later (or never) as it were. Putting off a meal of fresh living prey for something else that was laying around nearby brought to mind the possibility of a great deal more forethought than one wanted to see in the creatures the BSAA hunted.

The last thing they needed were Lickers that could spot landmines or a black market Tyrant variation that knew better than running into a heavy machine gun placement.

As she swallowed her last bite she stood up, throat bulging slightly as the torn meat traveled down. Stretching up, swaying her head from side to side as that armored hood of cartilage turned carapace pulled back to its limit, almost letting the brow of her still enlarged skull show from where the protruding shark-like snout and jaw merged into the altered skeletal structure of what had once been human. Opened and closed again, rubbing the back of her taloned fingers against the raw flesh and coughing. Spitting bits of bone and sinew and-

Metal, clinking onto the floor below as fragments of the Anti-BOW bullets fell out of her mouth. Valentine looked down at them, opening and closing her jaw as soft, strange, and bizarre sounds came from her throat. Like an out of water whale call mixed with deep growl. It wasn’t pleasant to listen to and made her scoot back as far as she could against the wall.

Which was about the time their radios turned on again, static tinged words coming through.

“Agents Cascos and… do you read? This is Grady I-”

Valentine reached down, savagely pulling the communications systems off of them and crushing them in her hands as she stood up. More angry growls from her throat as she made her way towards the elevator, looking up at the ceiling.

Before she reached up, tore something down and climbed up, tail trailing behind her for a longer time, the gray fins swaying from side to side and flexing as she ascended into the shaft itself for some reason.

And left the two gagged and bound agents alone. While numerous questions lingered in their minds.

Most pertinently, “Why are we still alive?”

------

“Jacobs, stay close to me,” Grady said as they moved along the side of the ship. The sea air and the increasing motion of the oncoming storm rocked the boat from side to side making this path less than hospitable even with their winter gear equipped. Anita brushed stray locks of blonde back, re-tying her hair as the wind picked up and the bitter cold bit into her even through her scarf and jacket. A sudden wave tilted the ship slightly and splashed water all the way up to their deck, making the wooden floor even more slippery than it already was.

“We better be careful. If we don’t finish this up and get this ship back underway Valentine isn’t going to be the only deep sea critter that might get a chance to take a bite out of us.”

“Got it sir,” she said as they moved down the side of the boat. The two lifeboats on this side rocking from side to side, occasionally bouncing against the wood with a loud clang. Stable, but clearly the ship was meant to navigate through and out of these sorts of storms, not simply sit them out as it was now.

“I thought you said she damaged the lifeboats.”

Grady turned towards Barker, the all weather goggles he’d slipped on hiding his eyes he spoke. “I meant that it was too rough to send them out, especially when she could attack through them and pick us off one by one at her leisure if we were in the water.”

“That makes sense. An aquatic BOW is bad enough just by the water. It’s a death sentence to fight one in it.”

Anita held her tongue and her own questions that were coming more and more. Like how Grady had managed to get this far from his original location all on his own. He’d mentioned something about flagging down a passing ship with a flare gun, but then why had it taken him so long to get in contact with the BSAA? If he weren’t so high up in the European branch and the trouble over this SBOW nonsense finally coming down like many had suspected when Chris Redfield of all people had come back from Africa with a bundled up monster and told them it was his friend there would probably have been more questions.

“As is, I can't imagine how he’s going to spin this report when we get back. Losing four agents to one BOW won’t look good for anyone, I don’t care how much of a golden boy they treat you like.”

“Still, how is she running circles around us? She’s out of the water. Bloody hell,” Barker said as he looked over the side at the waves pounding upon the ship, “shouldn’t we have the advantage on dry land?”

“More of her mind survived the transformation than most. Even now there’s a cunning mind trapped within those inhumanly predatory drives. We’re just letting her rest.”

“Or she’s going to retire us instead,” Anita thought, turning around and looking back the way they came. The shadows cast from the swaying lights of the rooms inside dark and moving like living things across the slick, wet floor of the deck. She turned back, seeing that Barker had moved down a side passage through the ship while Grady stood silently gazing out at something in the distance. Before she could ask what he saw, she stepped into a new shadow, one which had struck out from the side of the boat. Falling down as the waves crashed and hidden in the swaying motion of the lifeboat. Cold wet hands that were too large, too few fingers, and with a texture that reminded her of wet gloves or perhaps the skin of sea animals from a marine petting zoo she’d gone to as a small girl in Malmo.

Her hand was pulled from her weapon as she was dragged back, finger unable to press the trigger nor able to aim at anything. But in her panic she fought back still, despite how futile it felt. Till she bit down, hard as she could and more from the shock the BOW holding her let out a strange half-cry of surprise.

“There you are!”

Anita’s eyes looked back, hope springing from the jaws of damnation as Grady pulled up his weapon and aimed it at the creature holding her. Who growled, words half-formed from a throat not at all human.

“G-rady… you ba-tard… trai-”

He pulled the trigger, as Valentine’s tail swept her body down and around, turning to place her stronger back towards Grady. Who responded by tossing something down and between their feet. Anita’s eyes widened as she saw the high-explosive white phosphorus grenade a moment too late. Closing them as she prepared for, and hoped, that the concussive force would kill her before she felt the heat.

Only for the burning pain of ice cold sea water to engulf her as she, and Valentine hit the ocean. Her mouth opened in shock, gasping as her now waterlogged clothes began to drag her down. But before she could succumb entirely and sink beneath the waves she felt those same clawed hands snatch her up, tearing at her gear and pulling her back towards the boat.

All while something dark and ominous started to loom closer, blocking out the waves as it drew closer…

------

“Damn it all! My whole team?”

“Apparently,” Grady said, walking beside Barker as they continued their fast walk back to where the helicopter had been parked on the tennis court of the ship. A few of the dead ship crew in various states of bodily integrity remained where they had landed, evidently killed so quickly in Valentine’s earlier attack that nobody had time to even mount any sort of effort to get to safety or to call for help until Grady intervened.

“I’ll need to call this in. Get another team, hell get a full patrol sent up with support from NATO. We’re out of our league.”

“Clearly,” Grady said, a rather dour tone in his voice as he continued behind, almost to the steps leading up to the front deck of the boat where the helicopter was parked. “Why didn’t you tell us what she was-”

His machine gun emptied half a clip into Barker as he turned, the man’s shocked expression going still as he collapsed backwards and fell onto the stairs motionless and dead.

“Because I thought even you couldn’t screw this up.” Grady dragged the body towards the nearest side, dropping it over into the ocean as he continued his walk up. Now looking over the port side of the ship. The looming shadow now quite close indeed, the vast bulk of the nearby vessel blotting out the horizon.

The blue-white symbol of great serpent biting down on its tail painted onto the ship's side, while upon the deck of the apparently empty oil tanker for Leviathan Chemicals a light stealth helicopter sat.

Two cloaked figures and one woman in a slim and fur capped snowsuit looking down from the side.

Picking up his radio he dialed in a new channel, and asked, “Ms. Sherawat, do you have that countermeasure Tricell developed?”

After a moment's pause a woman’s voice came back, “Assuming you don’t mind a bit of spearfishing.”

Chapter 10: Chapter 9

Summary:

Sneak Shark continues her Tactical Sharking Action.
But will she be the predator... or the prey?

Chapter Text

She pulled herself from the frozen water by one claw. Her lower fins shifted to legs, scratching at the metal as she tried to find purchase to keep from falling beneath the rolling waves once more. Over and over, finally catched as she lashed her tail back and forth and managed to snatch onto the hanging rope of that half fallen lifeboat from her earlier arrival onto the ship. Her arm strained, muscles visibly struggling under the gray flesh as her webbed claws sunk into the hardwood. Teeth bared, Jill tossed the water logged body she’d been holding up above her and pulled herself into the lifeboat’s tip as it swayed back and forth, bouncing loudly against the cruise ship.

The shivering heap of a woman curled upon herself, her blonde hair hanging wet across her brow, blue eyes unfocused as she coughed salt water from her lungs. Still in shock from her near death, Jill didn’t even find her resisting as she checked her pulse and her black eyes looked into those blue.

“She’s alive, but not for long if I don’t get her inside and somewhere warmer.” Jill looked up seeing the lone rope that still held the boat up. There were only two left, Grady among them, so she probably had less to worry about. Hopefully the surviving crew and passengers she’d seen (and smell, god it still got to her sometimes) would stay smart and stay put till she managed to get them and explain herself. She ran her fingers around her throat, the red near fully vanished, the smooth gray flesh. Her gills opened and closed, pumping the water out of that secondary (or primary at times) breathing system as the cold, salt spray air flowed down her throat. Her coughing sounded less guttural and deep, feminine tones of her natural voice, or what this body somehow emulated returning once more.

The patch on her rescuee’s jacket named this one Jacobs, with a small Swedish flag on the shoulder pad. She supposed it made sense for the European BSAA to bother with something like that when one realized the sheer number of member countries that were technically supporting it with manpower in one way or another. Coughing lightly, she placed a hand on Jacobs’ shoulder, both to try and draw her attention and keep her from doing anything rash that might send her back into the water below them.

“J-ac… Jac-” Jill coughed again, feeling more water pump out of her gills as she took a long, deep, breath that pushed her chest out and made her feel some of those earlier injuries. While healed by her body’s often bizarre standards of most of them, they still made her wince even after devouring half a ham in an effort to finally stave off the hunger pains and give her biology the fuel to keep walking off all these injuries for a time. Much as her desire to ‘not look like a shark’ wasn’t something she got, not feeling all this in the morning was probably going to have to wait a bit the way things were looking.

Right now though she was still struggling to make sure she had a painful next few days in bed to wake up to.

Trying again, carefully shaking the other, bipedal and more apparently primate descended woman, Jill said, “Jac-cobs… are you okay? Do you understand me?”

She slowly turned towards Jill, eyes wide but now focused on the tall and lithe predatory figure hunched over her, protruding aquatic face covered in shadows below the darker, almost black in this lack of light, armoring. What other aspects of humanity visible in her figure or musculature must only have made her seem almost daemonic so close, less a person or what had been a person but sea-borne specter that was about to gobble her up and take her to the great beyond.

Still she nodded, teeth chattering as she replied, “Y-yes I-I understa-and you.”

Jill nodded, not trying to smile as the act, more a phantom limb of an expression, too burned into her mind and memories, led to showing a bit too many teeth and flexing certain muscles that felt natural now but made very nearly everyone back up when she did it. Chris of course had said it looked fine, but she’d known him long enough to realize that not even discounting their friendship his taste was horrid and weird in equal measures.

Less said about that horrible looking bulldog both Redfields had sworn to be the “Cutest thing ever” when showing pictures from their childhood the better.

Jill frowned, or thought of frowning. Her nostrils tightened a bit and the line of her jaw narrowed before she spoke again. “Jacobs… you need to understand. Grady is the one behind this. He’s…”

“He’s what?” Jill thought, still not sure what could possibly be tempting a man to sink so far from any sort of noble goal or purpose. Easily hundreds had been killed in whatever this was, with the potential for thousands, tens of thousands more if they didn’t find the sources and stop it. All the harder with so many within and without the BSAA stymieing their efforts.

“He’s betrayed us. The BSAA,” Jill said, motioning towards herself as she spoke. “He’s got to be working with these bioterrorists that are trying to cover up whatever is happening here.”

“How do-do you k-know this?” she asked, not trying to pull herself away from Jill at least, even if she was trying to put up a brave front despite being half frozen to death, unarmed after she’d dropped most of her gear into the ocean and seated within arms’ reach of a BOW… SBOW that would have had very little trouble tearing her throat open with teeth or claws.

Jill opened her mouth, even as she struggled to think of what evidence she could both bring up that would be believable. She’d certainly seen enough to make it clear, but the evidence outside of what she’d witnessed was circumstantial. Unless-

The radio she’d taken from the other SBOW in Heimfest turned on, the dead channel coming alive once more. Surprising both of them, Jill perhaps more as she hadn’t expected it to be of any use and had honestly forgotten she still had it clipped to her side where the now used emergency flares had been. Or that it would have been waterproof and so tough to survive her recent misadventures.

“Valentine… are you there?”

Grady’s voice coming over it added to that shock, and certainly brought a reaction out of Jacobs, who looked ready to blurt something out before Jill put a finger… claw to her lips. It was meant to simply shush her but probably came across as more threatening than she intended, but she had a suspicion and didn’t want to risk it.

“I’m still here Grady,” Jill said.

“And two for two, or more, at staying alive. Honestly, if I’d known you’d be this much trouble I’d have left you back at that hospital.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“The directors wanted to do something with you, and this mission had seemed tailor made to your… condition.”

“It would have been if you hadn’t betrayed us.”

“Hey, I’m just taking orders too. Mine just come from a higher authority. And sadly Krell and Colman had stumbled onto it before we were ready. Honest mistake, I thought we’d be able to wait out the winter and let the sun take care of most of it.”

This time she didn’t bother stifling the impulse, her teeth bared as she spat back a reply. “And for that you killed them and tried to frame me? Tried to kill me?”

“Technically that was an associate that did the killing. Shame they didn’t get it to stick the first time. Would have saved me a lot of trouble… and a lot of lives.”

“Shut up. You’re just another deluded terrorist as far as I’m concerned.”

He laughed at that, the mocking action making Jill’s grip on the radio tighten, her armored hood slipping down almost to her eyes as her body tensed with anger. “Such a simple perspective. Not surprising given how you’ve spent your career dealing with eugenicist freakshows and deluded mad men. No Jill… I just work for those. I’ve got much simpler plans.”

He paused for only a moment, not long enough for Jill to think of something else to say to that. The idea of someone dismissing the evil she’d faced down so casually stunning her to silence.

“Plans you’ve gotten in the way of too many times already. Taking down this BSAA team was the last straw.”

“What are you going to do?”

“It’s a better question of what you’re going to do. You’re going to come up, step into that big cafe they have on this little boat. Or I’m going to set off the C-4 I put in the engine room and turn this ship into a tomb.”

“You must think I’m stupid.”

“No, I think you’re too much of a bleeding heart to let me kill the passengers and crew that I had herded down there or those two agents you managed to save.”

Jill cocked her head to the side as she asked, “Shouldn’t there be one more?”

“Captain Barker wasn’t going to be able to handle you on his own if his whole team couldn’t do it with the element of surprise,” Grady said. “So he decided to take a swim of his own.”

Jacobs bristled under Jill’s grip, clearly wanting to say something but managing to read into Jill’s expression and remain silent.

“... fine. You promise you won’t kill anyone else?”

“I won’t need to. You’ve already ruined enough of my plans. I'm going to have to switch to yet another backup. At this point none of this shit frankly matters. You’re the loose end… so just do the right thing for once and accept the inevitable.”

Radio clicked off, the signal killed once more. While Jill stared back at the shivering form before her. Though now it seemed like other emotions were driving that action, as Jacobs looked at her with barely contained rage, her own teeth bared as she cursed the man that had just delivered that ultimatum. “That… that jävla fan! I-I’ll kill him… I’ll-”

“You need to get to the helicopter.”

“What?”

“I’ll meet him like he asked, but you need to change into something that won’t freeze you to death. BSAA teams should carry some emergency gear. And… can you fly it?”

After she nodded, Jill continued.

“And then you can radio back to tell them what’s going on once you get far enough away from all this. I don’t trust Grady not to do something else, but he definitely will if he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Jill stared off towards the ship for a moment, the dark blue slipping back to show her gray skin brow and her eyes fully. Finally shaking her head slightly as she said, “I’ve dealt with men like this before. His ego won’t let him accept anything less.”

“That’s still… crazy. They might have a plan.” It was near impossible to tell what she was thinking, at least not without a familiarity she did not possess. But it seemed like Jill was thinking of something as she turned back to look at Anita once more.

“Maybe we can make one too.”

------

The dining hall was like she left it, the floor wetter at most. The shattered ice sculpture had almost completely melted, and the last few balloons had popped at some point, but aside from that everything was the same. Even that tray of shrimp she’d nibbled on as she’d passed, trying to state her regeneration induced hunger and speed up the time for her throat to hill so she could explain things to the agents she’d captured and tucked away in a storage locker a deck below.

That problem had resolved itself finally, not that it mattered.

Agent, or former Agent now, Grady was seated at the bar between her and that back entrance below. Pouring himself a glass of brandy from a likely very expensive bottle he’d taken from behind the bar. Not alone, a pair stood beside him though neither seemed interested in a drink… or taking off their hoods at the moment.

She felt her own, fleshy armored hood pull down in reaction at the sight, just as she saw their green and glowing eyes turn towards her.

The feeling of hatred clearly mutual.

“And our guest arrives at last.” Grady drank the shot quickly, coughing before throwing the glass behind him were it broke on the floor. Saying to himself, “Going to have to remember that one for later.”

“Are you done playing around, or are you going to explain what all this was really about before you try and kill me again?”

“Shut the hell up! You killed Eric you fucking-”

“Carter, cut it out. People die. That’s how it is.” Though he said that, both of their eyes had shifted briefly towards a reddish hue before returning to that eerie green color.

“Yeah, you caused no end of problems for us tonight didn’t you Valentine? All because we didn’t kill you properly the first time.”

“Just tell me why,” Jill said, still hoping to receive some idea what this was all about. Even if they could put her down she still had to know why. The same curiosity, the same drive, that had had her fighting against Umbrella back when it had seemed impossible. So much so that even after she had thought to give up hope they had felt the need to send Nemesis after her to make sure things were settled how they wanted them.

With her dead.

At the very least it might also buy some time if her bet on his psychology was right.

“Fine. I suppose you deserve it, even if you’re only ever going to tell the fish about it,” Grady said, smiling as the alcohol loosened his tongue and flushed his cheeks. “Tell me Jill… what makes a man immortal?”

“What?”

“Humor me.”

“This whole goddamn thing is me humoring you…”

Her jaw tightened, the armored covering of hood and cartilage-like covering on her back making the gray flesh of her fins point out more as she took one step forward as she spoke, bracing for the explosion of action that might occur at any moment now. The pair of guards beside Grady did the same, the woman reaching for something under her cloak while the taller man held his arms… or what looked like arms out.

Still they were focused on her, and that’s what she wanted.

“The friends we make along the way,” Jill said with a dismissive look as Grady smiled back, showing teeth as he did. “Or maybe you’re more the ‘living forever’ kind of guy. Though my advice, it never works like you think it will.”

“No, that’s not what I believe. I believe that immortality comes from power. The power to act upon the world and make it different. And I will have power beyond anything you can ever dream.”

Her foot-claws pressed into the wet carpet, the webbing between her new toes feeling the cold water underfoot as her legs tensed. Her tail swayed behind her, the fin shifting in motion as well, her every sense and focus on when she would have to move and how long it would take to put her hands around Grady’s neck… or her claws through his chest.

At this point she wasn’t picky or even feeling squeamish about acting to type like that. He deserved worse in her opinion. All she needed was an opening.

“So what, are you going to blackmail the world’s fish supply or something? Raise up a zombie army and conquer Denmark?”

“Don’t be stupid Jill. Power is the same as it’s always been,” Grady said with a smirk. “And that’s money.”

Her surprise stopped her planned pounce. Though she hardly needed it now.

The fire from behind the trio shattered bottles, Grady crying out in alarm and then pain as he rolled to the floor. Jill followed down, avoiding the bullets and shrapnel as the two mercenaries from Heimfest took the brunt of gunfire and fell to the side, sharp high pitched hisses of pain.

The two other surviving BSAA agents moved quickly out from the doors into the kitchen and freezer, pointing their weapons at Grady and kicking him over. Red blots were showing along his leg as one of the bullets and tore through the side of his thigh before continuing on its path.

“Stay down!” the man, Cascos according to the name Jill had seen on his uniform shouted. Koprowska pulled his sidearm from him and kicked it to the side as Grady cursed under his breath and tried to keep pressure on his injured leg while two guns were leveled on him.

“Guess it was the friends we make,” Jill thought as she walked closer, the metallic scent of Grady’s blood notably different and normal compared to the stranger and fouler smells she’d been dealing with for most of the last few hours. Once again, just a greedy and narcissistic human, not some biological horror had been the cause for so much misery. “And this time he won’t get to carry on with his plans.”

Jill reached down and grabbed Grady by his collar, lifting him up and level with her face, blood spurting from his wound but not enough to show more than a painful and debilitating flesh wound. Lucky given what Anti-BOW rounds would do to soft flesh if they had a direct hit and were allowed to fragment as they were engineered.

“So, how about you tell me who hired you?”

He grit his teeth, fighting down the pain and probably trying to think of some other self-serving nonsense to say instead of an answer. Her grip tightened, stabbing through the tough fabric and stepped forward to slam him against one of the pillars at the edge of the bar. The pained cry came out of him as he tried to kick back and unable to look away he found her face drawn close as she repeated her question.

“Fine-fuck… fine, you win Jill,” Grady said, wincing as his leg bumped against the side again. “We got hired by Leviathan.”

“What’s that… some new conspiracy?”

“Wait, the power company?”

Jill turned towards Cascos who had looked up from where he’d been kicking on of the cloaked bodies to stare at Grady and her.

“Power company?”

“Coal, oil… natural gas and other stuff too. They’ve even been trying to expand into renewables and clean energy too.”

“As a tax write-off maybe,” Koprowska interjected. “They’ve been all in the news for expanding rapidly in the last few years. A lot of charity work and donations too.”

“But why would that be important?” Jill asked.

“Because they’re funding us,” Grady said with a pained laugh. “We don’t work like you do back in the States. Over a half of the funding we get now is from corporate donations.”

“That’s what this is about?” Jill turned back to the man she held, lifting him up higher, almost growling as she asked, “That’s what this is about? You’re… what? Skimming from the books and covering it up?”

“No… but the two billion a year they’ve been giving to us has been nice.”

That at least explained where some of the specialized gear came from. Particle rifles weren’t cheap, but if you were the one paying for the BSAA to maintain and purchase them in the first place it wouldn’t be that hard to get an extra. Absurd and wasteful, but at least it explained how it had ended up there.

That still did not tell her why it was in the hands of an SBOW.

Or even how or why they’d ended up like that in the first place.

“Ah… Joanna?” Cascos said as he looked away from Grady. “Where are the bodies?”

“What bodies-skit!”

Jill turned as well, seeing the now empty camouflage outfits lay empty on the floor. They turned wildly, aiming almost at random. The creak and sway of the rocking boat was muffling the sound of something moving in the room with them. A table on the far side jostled slightly and Cascos emptied his clip into it and below the tablecloth. Glass and other parts of the decor shattered and fell as the wood splintered and fell to its side. Before Jill could say anything he’d already moved closer, coming to see what might be behind it.

“Armando! Get back here you idiot!”

Before he could even turn back towards them he reached towards his neck, kicking and struggling as something lifted him up into the air and slammed him into another table. Jill’s eyes peered into the darkness, seeing some strange motion that didn’t seem right distorting the air and hanging from the ceiling.

“They can turn invisible?”

Koprowska ran forward, only to suddenly be grabbed and swung around by the semi-invisible figure. Her gun fired into the floor, held low while something else grabbed at her neck and cut off her cry for help like she was being strangled by an invisible foe.

Making a decision, Jill dropped Grady and ran forward. Only to come to a stop, the BSAA agent held before her like a shield. Her arms pinned to her sides, while sharp taloned fingers pressed into her throat. A pair of mandibles faded into view and clicked together as more of the other SBOW became visible. Eyes glowing light green as they stared over the woman’s shoulder.

“Take another step. Come on. Give me a reason…”

“Don’t-ugh… don’t kill them yet,” Grady said, hobbling up to his feet as he pulled out disinfectant and anesthetic spray from his first aid pouch. “We’ll need them alive for this to work.”

“What… they need them alive?” Jill’s thoughts were interrupted by the quiet thunk of steel on flesh, a long thin metal spear pierced far up on her thigh and came with a stabbing pain as the veins reacted. Followed by a burning, screaming sensation that went up and down her leg, before striking into her chest and taking her breath and strength.

She fell to her side, stunned and gasping for breath. Gills struggled to work in the air as the panic overwhelmed sense, instincts both old and new, and left her a prison in her new flesh. Numb and unable to even move.

Her ink black eyes turned back towards the far entrance where another figure was approaching, one she hadn’t seen in years, back before this living nightmare had consumed her. Holding an odd speargun like weapon with the logo for the company that had conspired, in part, with her own metamorphosis.

“Jessica… Sherawat?”

“What the hell took you so long!”

Jessica cocked her head to one side, looking only briefly at where Jill lay before speaking. “I needed a perfect shot. Only have one after all…”

They may have said more, but Jill was falling into an abyss, only the scent of trees and nightmares long passed to welcome her.

------

The panicked run through the forest had only just ended. Chris and Barry were busy barring the door behind them as best they could, this fortuitous mansion thankfully not only unlocked but warm after the unusually cold midsummer night. Jill held her gun down, webbed claws tight about the grip while she looked at every shadow, wondering if they hid another mouth of snapping rabid teeth ready to leap out at them.

“Calm down Jill, you’re safe now.” She reached up, adjusting the STARs beret as the blue black flesh armor slid back revealing more of her brow. Of course her hat had to be adjusted, velcro strap about her chin to keep it on, but it fit and that was the important part.

“You see anything Jill?” Wesker asked from the other side of the room.

“No, I don’t see anything.” She sniffed the air, the scents of the forest still linger on them. As well as the bizarre mix of blood and rot which had hunted them as they’d-

No, this was wrong.

She shook her head, looking down at her hands, smooth gray skin with sharp claws tipping her fingers instead of nails, thin webbing between them about half way down from the tip. The backs of her hands the same (unnatural) color while up her arm it faded into a darker blue-gray color before a semi-soft armoring sprouted up and around her upper arms. This merged into her back, covering almost everything but her back fins and-

Tail.

She felt it now, the awareness of it, extending out of a hole in her pants, long enough that it dragged on the floor if she wasn’t careful, the back fin still marred by a few bits of grass and leaves from when she’d been running through the woods, those snapping jaws at her back.

Why had she ran from them?

She had more teeth than those dogs, sharper too. Claws and the flesh of her legs were covered in that same organic armoring some places, while in place of shoes padded bracers wrapped around her lower legs and down to where her bare foot-claws tapped against the floor.

That must have been it. Jill opened her mouth slightly, closing it before she even spoke.

No… there was more, wasn’t there?

Barry must have noticed her distress. He was oddly perceptive at the minute changings in the motion of her fins and tail in terms of how she was feeling. Or maybe he’d just guessed that their junior member, no matter how impressive her resume or her SBOW abilities might be feeling a bit stressed out at having wandered into such a disaster out of nowhere.

“Any- fin wrong Gill?”

“No I- god Barry,” Jill said, snorting softly as she tried not to laugh. “Why do you never seem to run out of these?”

“Dad privileges, it comes with the territory.”

“Jill, we should check the back rooms to make sure they don’t have a way to sneak up on us.”

Chris nodded to that, adding on, “Look for a phone or something while you do that Wesker. We’re not getting back to the helicopter at this rate so maybe we can still call back to Raccoon City if we’re lucky.”

They moved out of the main entranceway, into a large dining room. Wesker took the lead while Jill followed behind. Glad to have something to keep her mind off the lingering thought that something was wrong. Beyond the rapid and strangely smelling dogs or the missing STARs team. Beyond the serial murders they’d been sent out to investigate only to find something worse.

Something was wrong with her.

But she couldn’t quite sink her teeth into what it was.

“Nothing’s wrong Jill.”

She froze, turning back to where Wesker stood in front of the fireplace, back turned to her as he spoke.

“What.”

“Nothing’s wrong because you’re supposed to be like this,” Wesker said, looking back as his eyes glowed red and a very different and far truer expression of cruel egomania went across his features. “I don’t make mistakes after all.”

------

“Motherfucker!”

Grady cursed again, drinking from the bottle as he emptied the wound closer and dropped it to the floor next to where he sat. Only a flesh wound, if a nasty one. Frankly he’d been amazingly lucky.

Unfortunately.

Joanna glared up from where she lay, arms once more tied behind her back, her neck still sore and tiny cuts from the SBOW suka that had threatened to rip her throat out before. Armando was in no better a position, similarly bundled up and disarmed for the second time by yet another intelligent and military trained mutant in the span of an hour. At least they’d gone down fighting this time.

The plan had almost worked, Jill’s arrival through the back supply elevator and helpful collaboration from Anita through their radio. Thankfully they weren’t blocking all the frequencies the BSAA normally used, though if that had been part of the earlier cover up and why Valentine had been unable to call them first she wouldn’t be surprised if Anita wouldn’t have any luck radioing back even if she tried from the helicopter where she was currently hiding an stripping out of her waterlogged clothes. The two of them had managed to gun down the targets, or so they’d thought. They’d been injured too, their bodies stained red from blood. But apparently they’d been wearing tactical gear as well, and combined with their body’s altered biology it had been enough to turn debilitating injuries into merely inconvenient.

“Should have made sure while they were stunned on the ground.” She mentally kicked herself again. All these rookie mistakes were going to get them killed if they weren’t already doomed to die as it was. Worse still the only equalizer they had at dealing with these things in close quarters was apparently unconscious on the floor.

Having a long sharp spear pulled from her thigh as the new woman walked up.

“Worked like a charm,” she said. While Grady glared back at her. The brunette smiled as she tossed the spear to the side and slung the weapon that had fired it behind her shoulder. “I knew that it would, Tricell was paranoid about T-Abyss enough to pay people not to sell it and let out that they’d made a counter measure if it was weaponized again.”

“What took so long?”

“I only have one shot on me,” she said. “It's a special mix of jellyfish venom and a Stonefish bite. With a number of unique alterations to take advantage of the improvements, if you’d call them that, which the T-Abyss can make to a human.”

“What took so damn long, Sherawat?”

She seemed taken aback by how Grady spoke, looking at the two agents on the floor and back up to him before speaking again.

“I had to make sure I had a clean shot… especially with the gun fight and-”

“You wanted to see who won.”

“What.”

“I’m not some greenhorn BSAA janitor that cleans up zombie outbreaks with a shovel like these two. You had plenty of time to shoot her but waited till her allies were down before taking the chance.” Grady stood up, wincing as a tiny spurt of blood came from his injured leg. Pulling out his sidearm as he stood and aiming it at the woman that had shot Valentine. “I don’t know what you planned and I don’t care at this point.”

“What do you think you're doing you maniac?”

“Cleaning up this mess… and an extra pair of hands would help. Conner,” he said to the male SBOW which was still standing beside Armando, “go get the package from the ship.”

------

The helicopter was cold and empty, but at least she was out of her soaked clothing and warming herself with a couple of chemical packs. There hadn’t been enough time to get back and help the rest and even if there had been she was still shaking from her dip in the ocean.

Anita smiled slightly as she thought about her unexpected rescuer. “Advantages of mutation.”

Valentine had been fine and easily snuck around to free her captured teammates while she radioed back to them to explain the situation. Now she was just getting her strength back and waiting for the call to fly back. Either by herself to get help, the bridge of the ship trashed enough that it might be a better idea to get some expert sailors out here to help them head back instead of trying to rescue the survivors by themselves.

Or perhaps with some passengers (and potentially a traitorous ass bound and gagged on the floor).

What she didn’t expect to see come walking up from the lower decks was a tall, and obviously inhuman figure bundled up in a torn and stained winter camouflage outfit. The hood pulled back, sharp black mandibles moving as it scanned over the deck before walking towards the nearby ship parked so close it threatened to sway into them with the waves. She ducked down behind the seat of the helicopter, as she had no way of knowing how keen its vision might be. Her breath came fast and panicked as she reached for the pistol she’d pulled out of their spare supplies and held it in her cold and shaking hands.

Minutes ticked by yet nothing came. Then more, till she was about to peer over and out, her worry and fear falling away as warmth and bravery finally returned.

Till she heard sharp voices once more coming towards her.

“Damn! Careful.”

“Well, sorry for me that you can’t handle a couple bullet wounds as well as some people.”

The woman she didn’t know, though her voice sounded odd, a strange hiss as she spoke. The man though.

“Quint Grady…”

Anita looked out briefly, seeing the traitorous BSAA agent being helped up the steps and towards the ropes leading up to the small oil tanker. They continued to walk towards the edge of the ship, backs turned to her till she could no longer see them.

But she could still hear.

“Fuck it.”

“Need a little help?”

“... Fine, but be careful as you-aah!”

A soft buzzing sound and Grady’s cry of pain faded into the distance. Anita dared to look out the back, seeing no sign of anyone on the deck or above it looking down. As the sudden awareness of what that might mean that they’d all come up while she’d heard nothing hit her, she took off, heart pounding and running towards the stairs below. She’d made it about halfway before the whole boat rocked, not from the waves, but from the impact of the larger ship taking away and the brief contact shaking them. She could only hope it had just smudged the paint and not torn a hole in the hull.

For now she was driven by more immediate concerns.

“Did they die… were they killed?”

Was she alone now, trapped on a ship with possibly dozens of survivors hidden away and who knew how much time left to get help before things got worse.

She ran into the dining area, the new signs of combat evident around her. But she didn’t see anyone.

“... Koproska? Cascos… Valentine?” Anita shouted out.

“We’re in here,” Cascos yelled, almost a panicked scream. “Get us out now!”

She was already running towards the back, through the swinging double doors into the kitchen before she heard another, an American woman, trying to speak over him.

“No you idiot, don’t tell her to-”

She gasped at what she saw, her lungs filling with a strange odor, like cleaning detergent with a bit too much metal in it. Her teammates were tied pipes beside the walls, looking surprisingly alive for what had just happened. A third woman, a brunette with a side pigtail and healthy tan was at another corner, her winter jacket partially opened where she seemed to have been trying to worm out of it… or get something hidden inside out.

Valentine was on the floor, chest barely moving and otherwise still and dead to the world.

And on the counter between them a vial of red liquid was bubbling, the double helix container hooked up to a specialized aerolizer as the gas it dispersed filled the room.

“Damn it, get rid of it now!” Joanna cried out. Anita ran, grabbing a heavy metal pot and stuffing it inside as she took off towards the freezer and tossed both inside. Sealing the door behind her.

Not that it mattered.

They’d all been exposed by now.

Chapter 11: Chapter 10

Summary:

Looks like they're done running and now the hunt is on. For more answers, for a possible solution... and maybe a little payback.
Or a lot.
(Bloods in the water Jill...)

Chapter Text

She woke to pain, stabbing through the numbness. The mansion and the horrors of conjured memories departed into the distant past. While her eyes opened, the black orbs shifted from side to side as she refocused. Muffled sounds, voices perhaps, surrounded her, but beneath the painful pounding of her heart they seemed distant and removed. She winced, teeth bared and body twisting as needle knife force moved through her chest.

And was yanked out.

“-glad I brought-...-adrenaline shot-”

“Just be-...-still human-...-brought her out-”

“S-stop talking so much,” Jill muttered out, turning over and crawling to her hands and knees. The cold metal floor of the kitchen stinging through her hands as sensation returned and the world burst into colors, sights, sounds…

And scents.

Something acrid, metallic, and familiar hung in the air. She sniffed again, nostrils expanding into dark triangles at the tip of her snout as memory tried to place it. When she’d last encountered this her senses had been muted and dull by comparison. The memories were more focused on what she’d been doing, the panic and fear in that cramped ship full of infected then on the specific details she could discern now. But the mere fact that all of that was rushing back again, burying the bizarre recollections of the Arklay Mountains was already bad enough.

“What happened?”

“This… this dodl went and shot you! We almost had them before-”

“You were tossed through a banquet table and had at least a 100 kilos of SBOW about to unscrew your head Agent,” a blur of white and gray said, stabbing an injector into the side of her neck as she pushed the rest of the pack towards the center of the table. “Luckily I still have three more inhibitors, though how good they’ll do against this is a coin toss.”

“And whose fault is that! You’re the one that sold it to them!”

Jill followed the accusing finger towards the woman from before, her eyes adjusting enough at last to clearly tell who it was. And suddenly rising, feet unsteady but tail providing support as it slapped against the shelves. Her body tensed, hood pulling tight and lower towards her eyes as the tooth bared snarl almost escaped her throat in place of words. “Jessica.”

“Jill. You’re looking… different now.”

“No thanks to you,” Jill said, a step forward, hand unable to choose between a fist or outstretched claws, though violence was the intent regardless. “Because of you I ended up like this!”

Jessica’s face was shocked for a moment, before she dropped the spent injector and, seemingly without fear for how Jill loomed over her, came to stand right in front of her, meeting her glare with her own. “Listen Valentine, there’s plenty of things I’ve done for you to be mad about. For monsters you’ve met and those you haven’t, but don’t blame me for the insanity that Excella got up to when she let Albert Wesker of all men lead her around like an insipid fangirl.”

“You’re the one that chose to work for her.”

The other three BSAA agents shared an awkward look between them as they traded the small box of viral inhibitors. Taking one out at a time and injecting them as Jessica had when she’d been untied and pulled them from where she’d had the cache hidden in her coat.

“I worked for a paycheck, a rather large one to be fair. Not because I had a crush on some gene-engineered indoctrinated psychopath with delusions of grandeur.”

“Then why are you working for Grady,” Jill growled out, so close she could smell the slight floral scent of whatever Jessica had put in her hair that morning.

“I’m not.”

“It seems like you do… or did,” Anita said, wincing at the string of the injector as it shot the stabilizing antiviral drug into her system.

“No Ms… Koprowska,” Jessica said, turning to read the name tag on her jacket. “We both worked for Caelen Reynolds, the owner of Leviathan.”

“The petro company?” Cascos asked as he stood. “Why would they be involved in BOWs and bioweapons?”

“Because Mr. Reynolds is dying and desperate men make bad decisions.”

“You’ll have to explain that to me.”

“Does this have something to do with the funding and bribes he’s been giving to the BSAA?”

Jessica’s lips curved into a slight smile before she said, “Even like this you still manage to ferret out information Valentine. I’d be curious how much you know already and how you learned, but we’re on a time table so it’s best to cut to the chase.”

“But wait, you cured us?”

“Cured… wait, what DID I smell?” Jill looked around, gauging their expressions. Hers might be almost unreadable, but the worry and way glances at each other and even themselves told enough. “What happened?”

“One of the things Mr. Reynolds purchased when he started buying up leftovers from Tricell were samples of the T-Abyss they had in storage. I suspect the plan , if you want to call it that, was to infect us, have us mutate and infect or kill anyone else on board and hope that your presence would be rationalized as the source of it once the BSAA cleaned up the mess.”

“Well that won’t happen now.”

Jill turned to look at the shorter man, the thin mustache damp from moisture from his noise and his eyes wide and glancing about the room. Hoping for some confirmation… and finding none.

“Armando… inhibitors only slow a Progenitor Virus,” Joanna said, putting away the medical kit she’d pulled that adrenaline shot from earlier. “We’ve received a base level t-vaccine, but the T-Abyss was a different variant and…”

“It was much more aggressive than others. You’ve got three… maybe four hours. More if you take off your winter gear.”

They looked at Jill, doomed expressions spread around the room as the proclamation of their ensuing deaths sunk into them. Or so it seemed.

“Plenty of time then,” Jessica said, slipping off her jacket as she moved towards the door. Pausing at the door to look back at the quartet of infected, current and past, standing behind her. “Well, I’m not going to be able to get the vaccine on my own.”

------

“So, he thought Umbrella had a cure for cancer?”

“Among other things. Honestly, you should’ve heard the rumors back in the day. You’d think these rich power brokers and officials would be immune to that but instead they bought into everything. Reynolds was convinced that he could buy a way out of death.”

“Well did they?” Armando asked, shivering as he checked the equipment in the helicopter. Without their jackets the bitter cold was quickly embracing them as they worked, painful now but likely to be followed by more worrying numbness if allowed to continue. And still preferable to what a warmer environment would do to them faster at this point.

Even still he was pulling out a low temperature drysuit and slipping it on as they talked. Jessica doing the same on the same bench beside him.

She paused in pulling it up her legs to add to what had just been said. “Jill could tell you that. Umbrella had plenty of medicines, but instead of trying to save the world when they found the Progenitor Viruses they had… other plans.”

“A new world order of eugenically perfected masters.”

Joanna and Anita shared a look from the cockpit of the helicopter. “That sounds like… well…”

“It is. Probably the only reason Umbrella didn’t steal from the brain trust in Operation Paperclip was because most of those Germans weren’t competent enough. In any event, Umbrella didn’t bother trying to find a way to make anyone live forever, not that Reynolds would believe you. He was desperate.”

“What did he do?”

“He begged, that's what he did. He must have offered Excella close to half his fortune only for her to turn him down. By that point she’d already been taken in by Wesker’s mad dream and anyone with sense,” Jessica said, motioning towards herself, “was on the way out. But when Tricell went down and Reynolds found me through the contacts he’d secured in the BSAA I decided I’d take the easy money she’d turned down. I just didn’t know he’d found another supplier before me.”

The engines spun up, the helicopter slowly lifting off from the deck of the ship as they turned towards the north. Following the oil tanker back to its home. One of many platforms built around the arctic circle, this one notable for the lack of workers by comparison.

“So all this stuff they have, he bought it for them?”

“He’s not a scientist, just a rich man dying slowly. Anything Grady said was needed he’d sign off on, same for those mercenaries he had doing security work out East. Before they went a little wild with BOWs and got spotted by NATO. Of course Russia bungled taking them down and they choose to… electively change their biology to continue working and avoid getting hung at the Hague.”

“Seems a little extreme,” Joanna said. “Turning into a BOW- I mean a SBOW, just to avoid jail.”

“Execution, not jail. And it’s probably the best identity change you could ask for. No dental records to match, same for fingerprints, even DNA is all messed up,” Jill said, counting on her fingers and grimacing as she ran out on one hand and had to move to the other. “And I only sound the same because I think I should.”

“Oh, yes, try not to get stressed out. The viruses have a mental component and might react badly to heightened emotions.”

No one said anything for a moment, shared glances between shivering and cold humans. While from time to time they looked at Jill’s form on one side of the helicopter, slightly hunched down and her tail pressed all the way to the other side of the cramped vehicle. A portent of doom… or the best they might be able to hope for.

“That still doesn’t explain the fish.”

“The fish?”

“Yes, the mutated fish. We came out here for that,” Jill said, rocking to the side as the wind picked up and the climbed slightly in elevation. “I found the source of that, or something on Heimfest. But the Soviets had secured it underground decades ago.”

“Right… the Draugs was what the locals called it. Sometimes miners and oil men would get sick and die… but not all the way. They didn’t know why, only that it only seemed to happen during the winter.”

“It reacts to ultraviolet light.”

“Violently. But more importantly, it’s another one that sometimes achieves cooperative synthesis in a host body. Probably not without side effects, but enough that it was pretty notable when one of his drillers got sprayed with hydrocarbon sludge and suddenly had the lungs of a man twenty years younger.”

“Impressive.”

“I suppose. He got vivisected so I doubt he got to enjoy them for long. I found out about this later when they started really digging for experts and resources, anything on what the Soviets found or what Tricell might know about retroviral engineering.”

“I see it, we’re coming up on the ship now,” Anita said from the front of the helicopter.

“So he wasn’t lying,” Jill said, lightly shaking her head as she leaned back.

“Come again?”

“It’s not important… so it only helps a small percentage of people, and this man hoped he could find a way to make it work for him?”

Jessica nodded as she continued. “Problem is I suppose his safety standards were lax and the stuff he was pumping up to get at this weird bacteria was leaking it all over the water. Nobody noticed while the sun was out, but now that the season changed it’s a different story.”

“The whole arctic is gradually getting infected,” Armando said, shouting over the engine as they swung low and slow over the waters. “Even if it will burn away in a couple months we still need to shut off the source.”

“It’s just a few klicks more. Reynolds put his headquarters on that platform and angled the pipes down not to get oil but this tainted crude teaming with infectious bacteria. Purer and easier to get to than whatever they found in the mines of Heimfest. I think the plan was to blame the fish on the old soviet base, but I understand you tore through it while they were still setting things up.”

Jill nodded as she looked past the pilots towards the oil tanker coming up. Asking, “And the labs were built on the oil tanker?”

“Plenty of space since it never carries anything else. The vaccine sample I had should still be on board. We just need to get it.”

“And then we just have to make sure this stops here and now,” Jill thought, her teeth bared as she looked down from the helicopter to the frothing waters a scant few meters below. Looking back towards the impromptu team of rookies and former ally she still wasn’t sure she didn’t want to throw out of the helicopter right then and there. “No, I don’t have time for some personal vendetta. They’ve got only a few hours at best and we’ll never get back to the coast in time.”

“You secure that landing pad on the oil platform for us when we arrive, if what Jessica said was true,” Jill said with a very pointed look that even her shark-like face communicated clearly, “it shouldn’t be too hard to do so.”

“You still want us to plant explosives when we get there? It’s going to be a mess.”

“Better it all burn then keep leaking this stuff into the water.”

“What about Grady? Will you be able to handle him?”

Jill attempted a smile, all teeth though it was. Looking from Agent Cascos to Jessica as she did. “What about him? I think we’re prepared for their tricks now.”

And with that she fell back into the water, swimming towards the side of the ship and rapidly beginning her ascent up the metal side ladder. Followed by Cascos and Jessica, who climbed as quickly as they could from the almost freezing seawater around them. While the helicopter slipped away, rising slowly and speeding up to beat the ship to its destination.

------

The ship was oddly silent as they approached the door leading down. What would normally have been a mere maintenance entrance had been converted into a long set of stairways that led all the way to the bottom of the ship, where the research labs Jessica had seen earlier yet remained.

“Hopefully they didn’t change the passcode yet, though I doubt they’d even think it necessary.” Armando stood behind her, looking in every direction while the storm brewing above them continued to grow. Slowly rocking the ship with greater ferocity. The door opened with a soft click and they slipped inside. Jill quickly moved to the front while Armando remained at the rear.

“There doesn’t seem to be much security.”

“There really isn’t,” she said to Jill. “The few researchers that weren’t picked up or in prison from Tricell made up most of them and the rest were basically rent-a-cops paid not to ask questions. The ship basically ran on a skeleton crew since they picked up most of the equipment at old ports along the Barents Sea.”

“Strange that they converted an oil tanker into a mobile research base.”

“I thought the same thing, till I saw this.”

Jessica cautiously opened the door at the bottom of the stairwell, a low red light illuminating the area before she opened it up. Strangely stuffy heated air flowed out as she shined a flashlight ahead of them. Jill’s eyes adjusted quickly, seeing massive tanks welded together into the area where the crude oil was normally stored. Tubes ran from them towards a white and plastic construction that spread out across the massive open area before them.

Viscous black tar dripped from valves and fell to the bottom of the ship. Looking down, Armando shined his flashlight, a muffled cry of alarm coming out at what he saw.

“Gottesmutter!”

Jill peered over the side as well, a scent of the odor rising up to meet her. Rancid flesh and blood, while below she saw the corpses of rats and insects burst apart, writhing in mat of moving meat at the very bottom of the ship where the bacteria rich sludge had leaked down.

“Thank god it doesn’t seem to be airborne. I think they were supposed to sweep down there with an ultraviolet sanitizing device.”

“I see what you mean by leaking pipes.”

“Trust a modern oil baron to cause an environmental disaster.”

Jill decided not to comment on that, instead lightly grabbing Armando by the shoulder and guiding him into the lab. The door ahead had a palm reader, but Jessica found it just as willing to respond to her as the code above had been. Opening into the cooler, sterile environment of the lab. White plastic sheets rising up and holding back the metallic gloom while harsh lights beat down upon rows of equipment. Microscopes and test tubes fill tables and shelves, but more exotic and expensive devices towards the center.

Though now they were stained with blood, the bodies of unknown researchers, still clad in cleanroom outfits strewn about the floor where they’d been torn apart.

“What the hell… when did they do this?”

“It wasn’t like this when you were here?”

“No! I- I mean I spent most of my time on the oil platform, being asked by Reynolds what else there was that Tricell might have had buried somewhere. But last time I was down here to verify the viruses and vaccines they’d acquired they were still alive. This morning!”

Armando placed hand near one of their necks, frowning at what he felt. “Still a little warm and not that stiff-scheiße!”

They rose up, Armando kicking back and tripping over a rolling chair as it happened. The torn gashes in their chests peeled open, writing masses of pinkish worms reaching out as the flesh tried and failed to knit back together. Armando pulled out his sidearm and fired three rounds, two in the chest and the last straight through the translucent plastic. Blood exploded from the back while the face plate dripped with red ichor and the zombie fell to the side.

Though the others began to move as well, each rising in the same stiff and awkward motion.

Jill’s jaw tightened, the armored hood slipping past her eyes as she charged forward, grabbing one by the arm and swinging it down. Her grip tightened, feeling the bone twist and then break as she threw the body into its nearest neighbor. With her tail she lashed out, knocking the legs out from another and then slamming her feet claws through the throat and neck, very nearly decapitating them in one swift motion.

Yet the first had already begun to rise again, the body moving forward, the mass of tendrils reaching out for new, warm and living meat to add to its own mass or to convert into more of itself.

She’d dealt with this type before, but mostly by running. But she was done running.

Suddenly a deep purple glow illuminated the walking corpse, the tendrils smoking and pulling away as it stumbled back. Unworking lungs rasping out moans that were almost painful to hear.

“Jill! You gut them, I'll fry them.”

She didn’t bother to turn to Jessica, only running forward to tear open the chest and clean room suit of another, tossing it to the floor where the UV light could be directed at the body as it tried to stand again. By her side Armando ran out of ammunition and grabbed of all things a mop out of a nearby bucket. Tripping one zombie as it tried to stand again and then pinning it down so it could be hit with the light as well.

It only took a little while, but soon the mass of walking corpses were down, bodies too damaged for the moment to rise again. Leaving the three of them panting as the adrenaline slowed and the lab returned to the eerie silence it had started with. Only now with the groan of the ship more audible and intermixed with the dripping of blood from the corpses arrayed on the floor.

“Did they have an outbreak?” Armando asked, whipping his brow for the third time as stepped over one of the bodies.

“I’m… I’m not sure.” Jessica moved over to one of the more expensive devices, the metal floor creaking even more as she did. Looking into the binocular display she moved a rolling mouse back and forth.

“I wasn’t aware you practiced biochem too. Trying to find new careers after the BSAA didn’t work out.”

“Had to do something before I realized how crazy my boss had gotten I-wait, this can’t be right.” Jessica stepped back, turning to a nearby laptop and wiping the blood from the screen. Bringing up the most recent tests. Her eyes widening at whatever she read. “They figured it out? According to this they-aaAAH!”

Something grabbed her by the back of her head and slammed it down into the laptop. A cry of pain and stream of blood from her face as she fell backwards onto the floor. Armando lifted his gun towards the indistinct figure that had snuck up behind them, only for a knife to go flying from its hands and stabbing straight through his right as he tried to aim. He stepped backwards, gasping in pain and shock as Jill watched the half-visible assassin run towards her. The first strike of claws almost ripped out her throat again, but she moved back, avoiding tripping over the bodies thanks to her tail. The next went low, and somehow she knew it even as she kept looking forward. Grabbing the limb before it could stab into her stomach.

Two more came towards her head but she let the hood slip down and rammed her own face into whatever was in front of her, earning high pitched hiss and feeling it step back.

“Damn it… you can see me somehow can’t you?” she said, the indistinct humanoid figure coming into detail as Jill saw without eyes, saw without sight.

“Maybe,” Jill said, keeping the hood down, her voice a little deeper and harsher when it came out. “How about you come closer and find out.”

“Huh. Well no use in trying the stealth approach,” she said, stepping back, becoming more indistinct as she did. Jill risked looking again, and beheld her opponent fully for the first time. Four arms, each covered in a chitinous exoskeleton moved from side to side, the three fingered talons tapping upon one another as four insectile eyes gazed back at her. Short, sharply pointed antennas shifted down as another strangely animalistic hiss came from her throat. Her chest resembled a woman's in part, but the contours had become sharper and armored over in chiton, narrowed down and covered in a mauve-gray color, slight splotches of an almost black green about her sides and flowing down her back. A short tail came out from her backside, a pincer-like extension snapping angrily as she moved about one of the tables, keeping her distance from Jill as she looked at her with hatred so clear that even with their vastly dissimilar features and mutations it was readily apparent.

“Are you just going to look at me, or do you have a plan?”

“Just trying to decide how Eric would have liked you to go. Stuffed and mounted or maybe I should try a fish filet.”

“I think your eyes are bigger than your mouth.”

“Or maybe not,” Jill thought, those mandibles stretching scarily wide as the hiss turned into a high pitched shriek that had Armando covering his head with his good hand as Jessica fell to the floor once more.

“You fucking killed him. We were going to get out of this together, take all the money this job paid and get set up stateside with new identities.”

Jill cocked her head to one side as she stepped closer and the other SBOW stepped back, keeping the distance about the same. “Really? Looking like that?”

“Fuck you! With the money we have saved away it would have been a regular American dream. White picket fence and a house in the country… hell, maybe I would have squeezed out two and a half kids or maggots or however the hell it works now.”

“Yeah, one big happy family of war criminals and bioterrorists.”

She leaped forward, her wings coming out and buzzing loudly as she soared towards Jill, voice shrill hiss screamed at the top of her lungs. Legs first, then arms, and finally the pincer tail all trying to find purchase. Jill rolled back, over bodies as glass and lap equipment fell around them. The mandibles snapped towards her face, instinct told her to bite back too.

But once again she fought it down. Instead letting the hood slip down, and none too soon, as a spray of acid came from the other SBOW’s throat. She dodged most of it, but some would have gone into her eyes otherwise. They rolled across the floor, grappling like wild beasts more than trained soldiers, the extra limbs of one struggling against the greater strength of the other. The armored exoskeleton kept her claws from finding many places to pierce and her limbs moved with uncanny precision and speed.

“Damn it. I need a way to get her off me and slow her-wait.” Jill’s head was slammed against a pipe, but that barely hurt. Instead she heard the movement of something slow and loud flowing through it. Letting the claws reach down and grip at her throat she instead reached up, grabbing onto a valve just above them.

“Going to rip you open… gonna taste your fucking blood and-aaAAAH WHAT THE-”

She yanked down with all her strength, the metal buckling and snapping. A spray of black sludge coating the mutated woman on top of her. Jill’s legs wrapped around her opponents as she grabbed onto one pair of arms. The other tried to stop the spray, but failed. When she started to feel the burning, stinging pain of the bacteria eating at her flesh and gills Jill let go, rolling to the side. Her hood pulled back as she saw Jessica standing over on one side.

“Here catch,” she called out, her voice distorted from the broken noise, as she tossed one of the ultraviolet flashlights to Jill. She caught it and turned it on, shining it on the SBOW. Who began to writhe about in smoke and flames as the black sludge which had been trying to take over her body ignited. She screamed out, dropping and rolling, wings on fire and coming up to stand slowly, supporting her weight on one of the tables.

Only for Armando to unload half his clip into her body before she fell at last, twitching on the ground.

“Sorry it took so long,” he said, panting from the pain as he stepped over, knife still impaled through his hand, “I’ve never reloaded a gun one handed before.’

“No problem Agent Cascos,” Jill said. “Thanks for the… assist?”

His right hand looked strange, the veins bulging out, flesh no longer pink and tanned but turning an off-gray color as one could see the muscles and tendons flex and pull beneath his skin.

“Shit,” Jessica said, reaching up and feeling her nose. The sensitive cartilage had rapidly rebuilt and expanded, pushing her nostrils out and lower as she snorted and coughed, bits of blood and other fluids leaking from her mouth. “It’s too… too hot in here.”

She struggled to pull her drysuit down, before simply cutting into it, peeling parts off to leave her arms uncovered. By the looks of it she was about to take even more off before Jill walked over and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Jessica… you need to focus. We just need to find the vaccine and then we can dose you both and get out of here.”

The panic fled her eyes after a moment and she nodded, moving back and running over to a refrigerated cabinet in one corner. Cursing as she found it locked, before Jill came over and with a bit of extra strength (that at least for the moment only she had) snapped the handle off and the door opened.

Revealing several very empty shelves.’

“Where… where is it?!”

“Where is what?”

“The vaccine!”

Chapter 12: Chapter 11

Summary:

Things heat up in the frozen Arctic.
Not good when temperature speeds up mutations.
But maybe they need to be a little more accustomed to the sea to finish this mission once and for all...

Chapter Text

The creaking of the ship almost overshadowed the panicked sounds of the two people around her. Almost.

Jessica was busy tearing the insides of the freezer apart, spilling the contents over the floor. Test tubes, blood packs, and more spilling or breaking upon the floor. Soon followed by the metal racks they’d been sitting on as she tore them loose as well. Empty of everything she grabbed the unit by the sides and with a sound that started as a scream of rage and turned into something else towards the end she tossed the whole of it onto the floor, the glass door shattering as it sputtered to death with the power cord severed.

“Maybe… maybe it’s in this one,” Jessica said, rubbing her eyes. Her nose had pushed out more, slightly wider and pointed. While her eyes were irritated, bloodshot and the pupils looked swollen. The veins on her face had started to stand out, bulging in an unpleasant manner. “Gotta be in one of these, I must have forgotten which one.”

Armando wasn’t doing much better, entranced by his own hand. Flexing the fingers as the flesh grew thicker and tougher, skin tone fading into a sickly gray. His nails had begun to push out, darkening in color and looking unpleasantly sharp as they twitched. The wound from before had faded, but he didn’t seem to have control of the limb. It moved awkwardly, as if possessed by another mind while he swallowed audibly and began to reach for his gun…

She needed to do something.

“Think Jill, think! We don’t have time to find vaccine now… the others might have more time left if it’s still cold enough out there but-”

Jill ran over, snatching the gun from Armando’s hand and picking him up. The shock of the motion brought him out of the haze and wherever his thoughts had been as he found himself staring into her face. He probably thought it was his future right then.

She knew better. The T-Abyss was frightfully unstable, her body was frankly the only stable example of it around. If they didn’t further slow it’s infection soon it would be worse.

“Jessica-”

“Nothing in here… nothing, but-”

“JESSICA!” Jill yelled out, mouth wide and the name echoing through the lab as she screamed it out. The ex-BSAA agent looked up. Her eyes were almost jet black now, strangely swollen like they didn’t quite fit in her head. She reached up and rubbed them, stumbling towards Jill.

“It’s-it’s not here. That bastard, that goddamn idiot must have taken it and the other samples… he must be planning to just infect everyone left, hoping the BSAA won’t be able to pick out what happened from the remains while-”

“Jessica,” Jill said, slowly as she moved towards her and looked down, “are there more viral inhibitors in here?”

“N-no… those were my private stash. I only really had enough for me but I… so stupid, should have just kept them. Wasn’t thinking, figured we’d have more time but-”

She was rambling again, the change or the fever or worries and doubts long dormant in her from her earlier betrayals all bubbling up at once. Given the nature by which ‘mental state’ affected the virus this was almost as bad as the balmy temperature and humidity inside the lab. “Ugh, they must have turned off the air conditioning or something when they infected these men.”

In either case she didn’t have time for this.

They grabbed Jessica and forced her to look her straight in the eyes. Now matching orbs of glossy obsidian staring at each other. Slowly her breathing calmed, her eyes blinking. And then again as a second set of eyelids folded over for the first time.

“Jessica, I need you to grab anything cold from the fridge. Ice, saline,” Jill said. “Not blood… might trigger something in them if they’re starting to get this bad already.”

“And?”

“Pour it over yourselves, hold it against your bodies… just cool down. I’m going to try something.”

“Try what?”

“Don’t worry about it. Just get something to cool down with,” Jill said as she moved over to the centerpiece of the lab. One of those extremely efficient and even faster sequencer systems that Tricell had manufactured before its end. Though she didn’t care for that part.

She found a syringe and after tapping on her arm for a bit plunged it in. Teeth bared for a moment as she pulled a fair amount of blood out and then found a rack of empty and clean test tubes. Into a high speed centrifuge they want. It began to spin up as Jill turned around. Jessica had found some saline packs in another fridge and had sliced them open. Pouring the cold salt water solution over herself and Armando. That seemed to be calming them down, or maybe just focusing on something that could help instead of panicking had slowed the infection.

The Progenitor Viruses could be bizarre like that.

They respond to psychological triggers as much as physiological it seems. A mother dies while a child survives from a greater will to live… even thriving in the infection. Strange isn’t Valentine?

She could hear Wesker’s voice as she pulled the test tubes out one by one. Taking a new set out, loading them into the machine and with a fresh syringe sucking up the plasma from the vials. Then injecting it into the tray, she slid it into the machine and closed the door. The internal light switched to a dull red as it accepted the new bio-matter for analysis. Jill grabbed onto the trackball mouse, thankful for something more cooperative than a touchscreen given how her fingers worked, and scrolled through the options.

“Sequence… replicate… compare… ah, there we are. Antigen separation.” She didn’t have time to look at what her antibodies looked like now, not that she’d been trained enough to really make sense of it. Rebecca had left to continue her doctorate and specialized in virology, curing instead of making these nightmares. Jill and Chris had stuck to more practical solutions.

“That’s the last of it.”

Jill turned to see Jessica leaning against the last open fridge. Her suit torn open, her jacket as well. Her chest damp, the saline solution dripping over her sports bra as she slid to the floor. The larger nostrils swelling and shrinking as she took deep breaths. They hadn’t grown larger yet, nor did it look like anything else had changed on the outside.

The machine clicked as it came to a stop, rapid chromatography made possible by synthetic chemicals once part of Umbrella’s trade secrets. Those at least had started to spread out as something useful from it all, or so she’d been told. It still took a tiny supercomputer to make the system work. Though even that was getting better.

She watched a new vial slide out, the separated antibodies mixed with 60% saline solution. Diluted enough to spread around but not so much that it wouldn’t still be enough for everyone. Or so she hoped.

“If it doesn’t they’ll be breathing salt water soon.” Jill thought, loading the vial into a fresh injector. Though as she took a look at it in her hand, less fingers than there were supposed to be and with the webbing between them, she couldn’t help but think that maybe they would anyway. Even if it slowed the virus down enough to make it survivable… a cure this almost certainly was not. “I can’t just give it to them…”

Not without asking first.

“Armando… Jessica,” Jill said, looking between them and making sure she had their, hopefully, cognizant attention. “I separated out the antibodies. This might slow or neutralize the T-Abyss in your bodies.”

“Well, what are we waiting for!” Armando said, trying to roll up his sleeve. And stopping as his hand rebelled in rather problematic fashion and left long, red scratches along his arm. Instead her bit down with his teeth, yanking it up as best he could.

“Where did you find antibodies for the T-Abyss Jill?” Jessica asked. Though something in her tone of voice, perhaps the slight smile that spread across her lips as she leaned back, eyes still closed, told that she already suspected the answer and only wanted to hear it said aloud.

“My blood should still contain them.”

“Wait… your blood?”

“Well well… I guess we’re at this point.” Jessica stood up, rolling her shoulders, a slight popping sound coming as she did. She lifted her hands up and brushed her hair back. Showing the ugly patchwork of veins that had started to darken along her neck. A sure sign that they had little time before neurological necrosis started to set in. “Guess swimming with the fishes is better than being buried with them.”

“You joke too much,” Jill said, stabbing the needle in and injecting a quarter of the contents. Jessica grit her teeth, lips pulled back as the burning fire of the chemical spread through her blood.

“It’s part of my charm.”

“Wait, but you're infected? Right?”

Jill sighed as she kneeled down, pulling Armando’s jacket down to reveal a place for the injector. With a stray alcohol wipe she cleaned the needle. Not exactly sanitary, but anything blood communicable between them was unlikely to survive the T-Abyss’s rampage, and even if it did, it was hardly worth worrying about at the moment.

“Technically not. It fully merged with my genetic structure and the active virus particles were purged once my immune system started working again. I’m clean.”

“Clean and healthy and not exactly human. She’s not lying,” Jessica said, pulling her hand back and feeling how her tender neck had started to slow its swelling already. “But let’s not sugarcoat it. Her antibodies identify a healthy body as T-Abyss infected one. It will fight the virus, but also leave a window for adaption around that.”

Jill slowly nodded as she turned back to the man before her. Who was looking at his hand, grimacing at how the limb seemed able to move still but not how he wanted it to. He looked up at her eventually, a grim sort of acceptance in his expression. “But it could stop it.”

“Maybe.”

“Or our bodies decide a little mutation is healthy. Worst case it does nothing and we still die,” Jessica added. Then lifting the hand that was still rubbing her eyes up and tapping at her head as she continued, “Or die up here till someone shoots us enough and makes sure we’re properly dead.”

“... fine. Do it,” Armando said. Before turning to show his other side. “This arm. Maybe it will slow it faster here and-”

“It should,” Jill lied.

The psychology of the subject was as important as the physiology after all.

And maybe if they hoped enough they really could walk out of this with only minor mutations .

------

“Alright, nice and even landing.”

Her copilot, for as much as she’d been working the controls, said nothing. She simply stared at her hand, which she turned over and around as she opened and closed it. Her index and middle finger placed down on her wrist and as she softly counted under her breath as she measured her pulse.

Again.

What, for the tenth time now? Or was it the twentieth.

Anita had thoroughly lost count. She was trying to keep her mind off… that . Joanna’s medical training wasn’t allowing such an easy distraction, or perhaps the lack of anything to do while on board the helicopter after Jill and the rest had departed onto the Leviathan tanker had let her mind wander back to their condition .

But she felt fine. No drysuit, her jacket zipped down while the shirt she’d thrown on stuck to her still damp skin and she shivered like she was about to enter hypothermia again. But being a frozen popsicle person was preferable to ending up some mutagenic deep sea horror.

Though given her look she’d be frozen fish popsicle and split the difference.

“Joanna, you take point on the right. I’ll check the left. We need to secure the landing zone.”

This at least would keep their minds off it all. The doors opened and the bitter cold hit them like a landslide. Her teeth chattering as she moved around the landing pad. They’d come down on the far side of the oil platform, which had been unusually built up compared to what she would have expected. Not surprising given its unstated purpose, but that meant there were more potential places for enemies to hide. The ship was still making its approach at least, and by what Valentine and this Jessica woman had said, there probably weren’t any more high class BOWs onboard.

Or SBOWs.

The terminology was confusing, and frankly bothersome. They’d trained to exterminate these monsters, not have conversations with them or work with them. But Jill Valentine was now effectively the most senior agent on hand by a good measure and unquestionably loyal to the purpose, if not the current leadership, of the BSAA.

Which was more than she could say about some of the directors down in Paris. They had to have known that Grady was funneling in large sums and requisitioning supplies and captured viral samples out of their hands. Either they were complacent or incompetent to the point of negligence and she didn’t know which would bother her more at the moment.

Hadn’t they joined up to keep a Raccoon from happening in their countries? To stop the next Terragrigia Panic and the countless dead and orphans it had created when another city had been swept in biological horror and sterilized for the good of humanity? To turn one’s back on such a cause for mere profit…

Well, Jill Valentine might look like a monster, but as far as Anita Jacobs was now concerned this sort of scum were the true inhuman beasts deserving her ire and whatever weaponry she could find to use against them.

“Honestly, she’s a little… weird, but on the whole she looks healthy compared to most BOWs. Probably won’t be modeling anytime soon, but it’s almost all cosmetic.” If anything her transformation had made her a better agent, allowed her to survive injuries that would have killed, crippled, or at best left her hospitalized for days or weeks and come back swinging in mere hours. Were it not for the cold water affinity provided, and set of gills to go with it, Anita would have droned, soaked and shocked and swiftly sinking into the cold dark waters of the Arctic.

It was hard not to see the positives, few though they might be, when she was only alive now because of them. Hell, Armando put three rounds through her throat and she just coughed up the bullets and walked it off. Of course such regeneration had its limits, Jill was no Tyrant with secondary parasites or cybernetic injectors of additional T-virus ready to enhance their freakish genetics anymore. Her stability meant that, in principle, enough bullets would overwhelm her body and stored calories, fat, blood… everything she was drawing on to keep herself going and drop her dead or good enough in time.

But that was still a damn lot tougher than any normal woman, ex-Delta Force or not.

“You look lost in your thoughts.”

“Sorry, just thinking.”

“About what-oh… that ,” Joanna said, letting her submachine gun full to her side on its strap as she looked at her hand again and went to check her pulse. Slapping her fingers against her side as she tried to speed up the circulation and get some feeling back into them. “Almost forgot for a moment myself.”

“No, not that.”

Joanna looked back at her wide eyed and bewildered, almost like the T-Abyss had already gotten around to replacing her head with a mollusk or an eel or whatever horrid abomination it was going to cobble together from her genetics if given enough time.

“What else could you possibly be thinking about?”

“How lucky we are.”

“Lucky… lucky?” Now she sounded angry, though her cheeks were already flushed so it was hard to tell how much those words had bothered her by expressions. Though when Joanna walked up, pulse measuring forgotten and almost jabbed her finger into Anita’s chest it became clear she’d stepped on a landmine as it were. “We came out here on what should have been a basic BOW hunt. Only to stumble onto some massive conspiracy that involves our bosses laundering funds and equipment to bioterrorists!”

“Yes, but now we know about it and can report it when-”

“When we what Anita? We’re infected! With the T-fucking-Abyss! Not the T-Virus, hell not T-Virus-𝜜, or 𝚩, or the 𝜦 strain or… the T-Abyss barely has any research to speak of. Tricell buried it as deep as they could after Terragrigia and damn near succeeded. Chrystus, I’ve only seen pictures of it but it’s not good.” Joanna shook her head, wiping her running nose and brushing her hair back. “It’s derived from deep sea vertebrates… but it goes well beyond that. It’s practically a primordial reset on evolution, using their unchanging DNA and slow evolution to drive us back to being like the first things to crawl onto land… and then force the infected violently back to the present day. It doesn’t even make zombies really, nearly everything is a Tier-II BOW or above.”

She rubbed her hand through her hair, massaging her brow as she did.

“The lucky one is Valentine. How the hell she can even walk or talk and still looks like a woman in places and not… some kind of-”

“Joanna…”

“What?”

“Do not… do not panic but-”

“What?!”

“Your hair,” Anita said, slowly pointing at Joanna’s hand. Where clumps of brunette hair were stuck to her hand, having fallen out in a small patch as she’d rubbed it across her head. Her cheeks, once flushed from the cold, went deathly pale, the light freckles she still had showing as she shook her head back and forth as she reached up again. Lightly tugging on a clump of hair. And wincing as it came out, no pain or blood. Just a reddish mark on her head where it had once grown all her life.

“No no no-this can’t be… need to oh god, I need to take this off, lower body temperature to stop the virus and-and…”

Anita watched her partner and senior team member descend into utter panic, stripping off her jacket instead of just leaving it unzipped as she had before. She was midway to yanking her shirt off before she stopped. Someone had growled…

And it wasn’t them.

They turned to see a man, dressed in a subzero suit and holding a heavy machinery wrench pointing at them as he let out a warbled cry. Animalistic, barely human and barely a language. She recognized a tiny bit of Norwegian in it, but only just. Though the red eyes made it clear what they were dealing with.

“Plagas?! But… what are they doing here?”

“Gówno! Where is- Pierdol-where is my gun!” Joanna struggled to find where she’d dropped her weapon in her panic to expose more skin to the subzero temperatures and choose freezing over mutation, as if her body would allow her such small mercies now. Leaving Anita to handle the approaching Plagas zombie as they marched forward, both hands on their weapon and beginning to run.

“That’s the bad thing with these. They’re smart… almost too smart.” It was why that mutant girl, the American President’s daughter, had made a deal about using new drugs to try and cure instead of kill. But even then there were limits after which they’d get a brain dead invalid at best.

This was definitely past that point.

She knelt down to one knee as she aimed, the burst ripping through his chest and causing him to slow his run, but not stop. The second hit the head, the rounds cratering flesh and skull, bits of necrotized brain matter spilling out.

She didn’t manage another before the head exploded, a mass of tentacles with new, alien looking eyes at some of the tips extended outward. The throbbing tentacular mass that had consumed the man’s spine now exposed. His… its arms dropped down, dragging the heavy tool as it clanked against each step as his pace slowed. While behind more figures appeared, drawn by the sound of gun fire.

She sprayed more bullets into him, the rounds ripping through his ribs, destroying lungs and more. Yet the parasite would not let him die, would not let its cadaverous tool rest. The wrench rose up in the air as the blades whipped down, ripping the jacket from Joanna’s hands and revealing her gun.

“There!”

Too late.

Anita grabbed her belt and yanked her back before the BOW could hit her. Just in time as the bone-like blades etched nasty grooves into the helicopter's metallic side, sparks shining in the gloom as it lifted its weapon up and began the approach again.

“Fine, take this you jävlarnas!”

She tossed the grenade she’d pulled from her side past the BOW as she held Joanna close and rolled their bodies around the side of the helicopter. Hopefully the shrapnel didn’t hit anything too important.

The explosion was deafening, but more than ringing their ears the BOW tumbled forth, its head tentacles still for a moment before twitching to motion again. She reached down and loaded in another clip. Aiming at the prone figure she rose up, screaming as she did and fired again and again. The full auto barrage made the lump mass of flesh twitch as the rounds tore through it. Till at least it burst apart, foul yellow pus leaking out as the mass went still and the body it had taken felt death at last.

Joanna brought her hands down from her ears, more of her hair stuck to her fingers as she stared at her hands.

“Oh to hell with this.” She reached down, slapping the hair from her hands and grabbing her by the scruff of her shirt. Now clearly bloodshot eyes looked up at her own.

“Stop screwing around Agent Koprowska!”

“I’m losing… losing my hair-”

“You’re about to lose your head if one of these BOWs gets to you!”

She stood up, looking at where her weapon had fallen and past it where the crowd of likely other Plagas were rising up from where the explosive had stunned them. “But… we’re going to be like them soon enough…”

“No we’re not because we are going to kill them,” Anita said, switching back to burst and stalking forward. Shooting once, twice more before she turned back to Joanna. Kicking her dropped gun across the landing pad. “We’re going to live because we’re the helvete BSAA! And if we turn into mutant mermaids, we will keep fighting till we can’t!”

Joanna picked up the weapon at her feet, turning off the safety as she came to stand next to Anita. Her earlier panic was fading as the purpose of their training rose to meet them. Their weapons discharged death to the already dead, mercy to these shambling abominations. One by one they fell, some too torn apart for the parasite to even salvage their corpses as it had with first, killed by the constant fire of fragmentation rounds through their flesh torsos and un-protected heads.

They almost had them down, but then Anita’s weapon ran dry. She cursed under her breath, pulling out the only other grenade she’d had. Seeing the crowd coming up the stairs still she tossed it just over them as she ducked down. Joanna followed, reading to aim as the next Plagas zombie fell. While Anita reached back and grabbed hold of the wrench that had fallen.

As the infected oil worker tumbled forward she shook her head as Joanna took aim, instead lifting the heavy metal club above her and dropping it down. Hard.

And then again. Over and over till she felt a sickening crunch and then once or twice more till the writhing from deeper instead stilled.

Panting, she looked back at the stairs. Most of the infected had been too close to the last explosion, limbs blown off or too mangled to allow them to move. A few had stumbled over the side, the railing failing and the long drop to the ocean below making them the sea’s problem and not theirs.

For the moment, at least, they were safe.

She sucked in a deep breath, copper tinged and coughing. Her mouth felt funny. A taste of blood on her tongue. She spat it out.

And stared at one of her teeth in the snow, mixed with blood and saliva.

“Oh god.”

She ran her tongue over and around as Joanna turned to face her and motioned for her to open her mouth. She felt something strange, more than just that tooth was loose but-

“Your gums are receding and changing… fast.

“I can feel something,” Anita said, before opening her mouth wider. Wincing as it felt like her skin pulled taut and then gave a little. More than it should.

More than it could .

“There’s… there’s new teeth growing in.” Joanna poked the space in her gums, cautiously looking at what was coming out. “They’re not… they’re like…”

“Like what Joanna? I can’t look inside my own mouth.”

She swallowed before speaking.

“They look like shark teeth.”

“Ah… so it’s like that.” Anita nodded, opening up the door to the helicopter. “Well we don’t have much time then.”

She pulled her jacket off and tossed it in the back as she grabbed another clip for her weapon. The last, as apparently Grady had, as expected, doubled up with twice as much as the rest of them without even asking.

“Bastard even had to hog the ammo.”

“How are you so calm about this?”

She turned back to look at Joanna, who was staring at her and clearly wanted an answer. Anita just shook her head, a grim smile spreading across her lips as she felt a slight pain in her jaw as teeth she had fought against teeth she would have soon enough. “I told you already… we’re lucky.”

“How can you possibly say that?”

“Because Jill Valentine, a Raccoon survivor, a BSAA legend is going to get us out of this. Maybe I’ll need dentures or won’t be able to smile anymore without scaring old ladies,” Anita said, swallowing blood and spit as she spoke. “Maybe you’ll need a wig, but we’ll live, we’ll take Grady down and make them pay for all of this.”

“You really believe all that?”

“If you don’t believe we can make a difference why’d you even bother joining up? You could have just waited in Warsaw, hoping that the next world war doesn’t involve legions of BOW supersoldiers marching at the frontlines. We- I do this because I know I’m making the world safer, that I’ll take the risk so others won’t have to!”

Something finally clicked in her teammate and Joanna had a spark in her eyes again. A confidence that had been all but snuffed out as the red gas of the T-Abyss had filled their lungs and potentially damned them to inhumanity, to monstrosity. To life beyond death worse than death itself.

“Okay. We’ll keep going till we can’t.”

“And if we have to swim the rest of the way, we will do that too.”

“Don’t joke about that Anita. I’m a terrible swimmer.”

“Might not be for much longer,” she said, smiling till the pain in her jaw made her stop. Instead she looked at the corpse and gave it a kick as she walked towards the stairs. “Why do you think they had Plagas on the oil platform?”

“Smarter, less prone to mutations if not dominant. Easily controlled by a dominant strain, and you saw what those other SBOWs looked like?”

“Sort of like Graham?”

“There’s a theory going around, the main reason the BSAA is so hesitant…”

“What is it?” Anita asked. “I haven’t looked too much into mutagenic virology. Just how to kill them.”

“Well, since Graham’s mutation matured and stabilized the idea is that the Plagas might see her as a Dominant or some kind of Queen-Plagas if nearby. And that could carry over to other infected that end up reacting similarly to attempts to neutralize the Plagas in their bodies.”

“Meaning they could then naturally control the Plagas infected or Plagas-slaved BOWs they’ve been making out East?”

“Precisely. The new types of viral inhibitors can save lives, but what’s always stopped there from being more smarter, human level intelligence BOWs was the speed at which the infection progressed and how it damaged the nervous system before the body could adapt. Take that away and…”

Anita nodded, though internally she turned away and looked at the corpses piled along the walkway. And then down at her own hand. Looking for more signs of changes and so far, thankfully seeing none. “Take that away and they’d still be people… not weapons.”

But what Umbrella had wanted was weapons, what the terrorists that had used their tools had wanted was victims, what Tricell had wanted was a world undone… this was different .

Wasn’t it?

“But why were they infected? It’s almost like they’re just killing everyone involved in this now.”

“It looks like it. But that’s just more blood in their ledger,” Anita said as she loaded her fresh clip in and racked it back to slide the first round in. A fresh, Anti-BOW fragmentation round loaded and another 44 behind it.

“And we’re going to make sure they pay.”

Chapter 13: Fanart Intermission

Summary:

About time I posted these wonderful pieces by Nell on Spacebattles (and I believe a similar user name here on Ao3?)
In any case they really inspired me to both pick up the pace and shift some of Jill's design around.
A great mix of SBOW and 'cute' shark in my opinion.
'Gill' Valentine in all her glory.
(Now to save up some money for some sensibly dressed shark girl pics some day...)
Anyway, again and for a thousand times more, truly excellent work on this!

Chapter Text

Gill Valentine, Face Revealed

Gill Valentine, Faced Armored

Chapter 14: Chapter 12

Summary:

Jill re-unites the whole team.
Now it's just time to face off and deal with this problem head on.
Valentine-style.

Chapter Text

After the shots they left the lab as quickly as they could. Even with the stopgap solution working (or providing a strong enough placebo effect for their minds to keep focused despite it not working), it was still dangerously hot and humid. Even Jill found it uncomfortable, and she was wearing less than any of them when one considered how much of her outfit had been damaged already. She took the UV-light with her, stashed in the long emptied side pouch where her emergency flares had been before. They’d run down on some ammo taking the zombies out, but with the UV countermeasure they’d be able to handle the rest much easier now.

Or so she hoped.

The bodies were left behind them, still twitching in places as bacterial infection tried to reanimate the damaged tissue once more. The now dead SBOW woman hadn’t been carrying anything of note, apparently having stripped down to being almost naked to better use her organic camouflage to attack them.

It hadn’t been a smart plan.

“I’m not sure she really cared if she won,” Jill thought, looking away from the corpse as they climbed up the stairs. She may have been a monster but she’d still been a person too. Without something or someone to look forward to after all this perhaps she hadn’t cared if she’d lived through it anymore. Jill ducked down under the door as they exited, jaw set firm as her tongue touched teeth too sharp and more behind them than there should be. By some standards she was a monster too, those with her only receiving a stay from the same fate if that. But that woman had chosen to do acts befitting monstrosity long before she’d had wings or mandibles hadn’t she? “Even without the mutation, she was never going to get that happy ending she was talking about.”

They passed through an airlock, the reflective metal along the sides showing a warped perspective of her face. The light gray snout of a deep sea predator extending from what once had been the skull and head of an attractive woman. Enough of her wetsuit now torn or damaged from injuries healed over to show much of her equally altered flesh. The T-Abyss maintained strong musculature, humanoid appearance, but wiped away other things. The form of breasts but not their purpose evidently by what wasn’t covered by the torn portions of her outfit, ripped and burned away in places. Her stomach now taut and muscled as it had been during her hardest days of training but so smooth, as if she’d never come from the womb of her mother.

She’d done everything right… was she too going to one day face a similar fate? Dying in battle as just some monster against another?

The boat rocked slightly, coming to a stop as the engines went against its motion and they must have collided slightly with something else outside.

“Well, we must be here now,” Jessica said, making a slight snorting sound as she tried to clear her enlarged nostrils and talk normally. Her changes seemed to have stopped, but Jill suspected that the amount of plastic surgery it would take to bring her face back to normal proportions would bankrupt even Sherawat’s ill gotten gains. Assuming of course the underlying bones hadn’t shifted and grown, which was unlikely with her eyes were either larger or seemed to have been pushed out slightly by whatever had been happening to her face before.

“They made good time at least,” Armando added, rubbing his face with his mutated hand. Then pulling it away when he noticed the light brown hairs of his mustache coming off onto the gray skinned fingers. “Of course.”

“To be fair it made you look like an old Prussian soldier.”

“How can you joke about this… you’re probably going to lose your hair too!”

Jessica shrugged as she turned the crank on the door leading to the next set of stairs going up. “Lot of women would kill to never have to shave again. And Valentine seems to be making it-shit.”

She ducked back in, just as some muffled cries came from up the stairs. Jill peaked her head around and what could only be the skeleton crew Jessica had mentioned going by the Leviathan Chemicals patches on their jackets. But with the slight red glow in their eyes and muttered broken statements it was clear they’d been infected too. But not with this Draug bacteria but something else.

“Plagas? But why?”

“Controllable. This stuff they found in the hydrocarbon sludge might be a miracle cure now if that last report was true, but it hasn’t been tamed for weaponized use. And I’d bet that the SBOWs working for Leviathan can still control Plagas zombies which makes it easier for them to keep things running while they take care of anyone else around.”

“We don’t have time for this.” Jill stalked forward, the hood slipping down over her eyes. She could sense the strange electrochemistry of the Plagas as they first stumbled towards her. Limbs dull and leadened, but moving with inhuman stamina and strength. While something larger, twisted, latched about their core and writhed about. Her hand shot out, into the chest claws first as she gripped the neck. The tentacle mass extended, but only struck at the closed and armored cartilage hardened over her face. The smell was disgusting, rotten meat and foul blood. Made all the worse as her webbed talons sunk in and twisted. Through skin, muscle, fat and then bone. Till she got to the thing on the spine and pulled, crushing it as she did.

And dropping the now thoroughly lifeless body at her feet.

“Save your bullets and follow behind me,” Jill said, turning to the next and moving forward.

They didn’t have time to waste playing with these distractions.

------

With the landing area cleared and safe at last, the two BSAA agents moved forward. Anita kept wincing as she either spat or swallowed blood leaking from her jaw. It also felt sore, cramped in places. She didn’t particularly like seeing her teeth pop out and fall into the ocean below each time she leaned over the railing but it took a bit of pressure away. Once or twice she reached up and pulled on from her lips when it came loose and out of a tiny bit of sentimentality stuck it in her side pocket.

They were her teeth after all.

“Though don’t sharks grow new ones all the time?” She ran her tongue over the triangular replacements that were poking up and making her mouth ache as it failed to contain them all. She hadn’t seen Valentine’s teeth much, she seemed to keep her mouth closed to hide them when she could, but it seemed to be following the same path. The hair coming off of Joanna’s head fit too, and made Anita wonder when she’d lose hers.

Her hand moved up towards her head from where she’d been massaging her jaw, tentatively about to brush through her light blonde hair and see what happened.

When the oil platform shook slightly, a harsh metal on metal sound came from the opposite side from where they had landed.

“I think the boat’s caught up,” Joanna said, taking the lead and quickening her pace. “Let’s hurry up before we mutate further.”

“Right, they might have secured the vaccine by now.”

“Even just more viral inhibitors would help. Can’t believe that the BSAA hasn’t at least allowed us to carry them yet.” Joanna said this with a roll of her eyes, clearly voicing part of an argument she and other medics for the agency must have had at length. The new treatment worked wonders but the number of survivors that came out alive, cognizant, and talking despite being so heavily mutated had spoked the higher ups from approving it.

“Probably afraid they’ll have to start changing uniforms if we end up growing tails or wings or things.”

“God no, I can at least do something about the hair. I don’t need a tail.”

“It would help with your swimming. I almost made the national team without one even so…”

She trailed off as the two of them rounded another corner and saw the oil tanker resting next to them. A long metal walkway was slowly being lowered down to the deck as waves continued to sway the boat back and forth. Though more concerning than the ignored safety issues was what they saw on that deck. Maybe half a dozen figures, standing about.

“You have your binocs still?” Anita asked. Joanna nodded, pulling them up from her side and looked down at the deck.

“ Bękart … it’s Grady. He’s with one SBOW… probably more Plagas by the way the bodies are moving. I don’t see any other BOWs or anything else of note.”

“Shame we didn’t bring a rocket launcher or a sniper rifle.”

Joanna nodded as she slid her binoculars away. “Yes. They’re lined up like bottles on a wall. Pop… pop… pop .”

She motioned with her hands as if she held a rifle as she made the sounds, before sinking down beside the pipe structure and running those same hands through her hair in frustration that it was just an idle fantasy. Which came out in fist fulls this time. Her expression went from shock, to fear, and then to anger in a rapid flow. Teeth bared as her hands clenched into fists and she kicked a toolbox away and into the depths before slamming her fist against the metal pipe next to her.

“ Cholera… cholera! ” Joanna cursed as Anita grabbed her shoulders and tried to calm her down.

“Hey, they're here… which means Valentine and the others are hiding on board too. We just need to meet up with them and get the vaccine.

“Right… the vaccine,” Joanna said. Her voice still carried a tone of soft resignation.

“The vaccine they have that will stop this,” Anita added, helping her friend up. “We just have to stay positive. Keep focused on the mission. Stay out of sight and try and take down anything we see quietly.”

“Right. Quietly.”

------

The door gave on the third kick, Jill's foot claws leaving sharp dents in the metal as she drove all her weight and strength into it. Her hands tightened around the railing beside her as she felt the impact up her leg and watched the lock snap open at last. The hinges also bent, the makeshift add-on to this second entrance to the lower hidden lab might have been locked to them but Jill had added some new, more foolproof methods of dealing with that sort of issue since the last time she’d encountered them.

“What would Burton have said… something about me having a ‘Skeleton key for a foot’ now?” Though he’d probably try and fit in a fish pun. Maybe reference to fins or something about her being able to break into Davy Jones’s Locker if she wanted to. She hoped Burton was doing okay, she hadn’t seen or heard from him in a while even before… Wesker.

Such distracting thoughts almost took her away from noticing the figures turning towards her as the door came down. Multiple men- multiple Plagas infected at least, turning and pointing. Before the last SBOW working for Leviathan raised his hand and they went still. Beside him Grady stood near a long metal ramp which shifted back and forth as the boat moved leading up to the oil platform. She couldn’t see well past the glare from the flashlights now being shined on her, but his voice told her all she needed to know.

“Valentine!? How the-”

“Guess that’s what kept Carter busy. Must have already dealt with her if you’re still alive.” Conner moved to the side, picking up a heavy metallic crate and with a snap opening it up. Jill couldn’t see what it was, but the sound told her enough. Something long and metallic falling to the ground beside it, a harsh click as a chamber was armed and slowly building whine that she’d once described as teeth grating back in basic training.

“Down!” She yelled out, jumping back and grabbing Jessica and Armando before they could get further up the stairway.

The minigun let loose, shredding through walls around them. She crawled lower, dragging them with her till they were almost a floor below, the shrapnel and possible ricochets dangerous enough if they were too close to that weapon as it continued to hose them down in suppressing fire. The modifications made to the ship weren’t armored for such damage and Jill began to fear that the very stairway they were on might collapse if it kept up too much longer.

Then, mercifully, it went silent.

“She’s not dead from that-you’re not dead from that are you Valentine?” Grady yelled out into the sudden silence.

“I’ll reload and handle them.”

“We don’t have time for that! Let her die to her new infected friends or kill them when they turn. We have to deal with the old man and get out of here before the BSAA sends another team.”

“... Fine.”

Jill stood up, walking crouched down as far as she could towards the upper floor and peeking her head up.

“Shit.”

Conner was leaving, yes, but the minigun was sticking behind. Now strapped to the largest of the infected ship workers, the belt was replaced to a spare as he pointed towards their hiding spot, eyes glowing crimson red in the twilight gloom that enshrouded them. Already Grady was quickly walking up the ramp towards the oil platform, his last ally soon to follow.

“Looks like his first aid did the trick,” Jill thought. Not even a limp.

“I’m going to draw their fire. You two try and get behind if you can.” Jill said.

Not waiting for a response, too little time before the zombies started using their weapons, poorly but effectively enough to possibly kill or injure her. Which she just didn’t have the time to deal with right now. Whether or not she could regrow a limb blown off by something like that she didn’t know, but it would take the one thing she had so precious little of.

Time.

So Jill sprinted out through the door and leaped across the deck, tail snaking behind her as the last portion of a gray black blur before she slid behind part of the deck’s upraised structure still left from when it used to haul crude oil. The gun began to spin up, but now pointed at where she was, crawling down and away from the fire which tore up the railing beside her. Then a lifeboat as she moved further down, the angle of fire changing as the zombies continued their slow, methodically minded approach. But they were keeping their eyes on her and not the two still hiding a deck below.

“Just a little further,” Jill thought, rolling over and taking her speargun out. Laying on her back, tail between her legs as she pumped it up and took aim. She’d have one shot at this and then it would all be on the other two. If she missed she might not survive even if they managed to take the machine gunner down.

He stepped around the edge, hefting the minigun up, barrel smoking and starting to glow in the darkness. Just as she fired, aiming not for his chest or head.

But his legs.

Straight through it went, and Jill’s hand snapped out, grabbing the line and pulling hard as her foot claws caught on the railing support and part of the deck beside her. The well large and heavyset man, or what remained of him in that infected body, slipping and falling to one knee, the minigun barrel now pointed at the ground as he reached down and yanked at the harpoon embedded in him.

While a barrage of bullets hit him in the back. His head exploding outward in a shower of gore. Though whatever hope she’d had that would have been the end of it died quickly. For much like Nemesis long ago, the parasite alone was perhaps more important than the necrotized gray matter it had consumed. The bladed tentacles sliced through the harpoon’s rope as he rose again and Jessica let out a cry of pain, one snaking backwards and embedding itself in her thigh before she could duck behind the door. Other zombies moved towards them, ready to support the gunner as it somehow still knew to aim its weapon down the long and narrow path Jill had led it. She dropped the speargun, rolling over and scrambling to her feet as she ran. The bullets began to impact low, the angle of the gun rising up as its aim corrected to saturate the entire volume where she could be with hot lead death.

She could not hear how Armando or Jessica were doing over the gun, but doubtlessly they were struggling against the horde without her strength and training to level the odds.

Jill glanced over the side, briefly considering another jump in the water. But while it would keep her alive, the rest would die by the time she climbed back up. Assuming it didn’t also break the possible cure she was still carrying for the rest.

“Damn! I just need a bit more-”

A deafening explosion silenced the gunfire, and then twin cries came from the ramp as a salvation arrived. The other two agents, Anita and Joanna, charged forward, coming to a stop at the bottom and emptied a clip each into the Plagas before they could rise up. As they stopped to reload, Armando appeared in the door, grabbing one of the infected as he came to stand with his infected right hand around the throat. Squeezing tight as the parasite tried to emerge, and then firing shot after shot into the open mouth and the pulsating mass in his grip till it went still.

Jill turned tail and ran back towards the fray, leaping onto the gunner, ignoring the blades as they struck at her body. The carapace slipped over her face, and all it would damage were her clothes. She grabbed at the bladed whips and yanked them off, one by one. Once disarmed of its organic weaponry she slammed her hands down on it again and again till the creature burst apart on the deck and the body beneath her shuddered into final stillness.

She rose up, her breath hot enough to mist the air as the blue-black hood slipped over past her brow and she took stock of the damages. Armando had come out fine, though the rest of his mustache was gone as he wiped the blood from his face. Jessica was clutching at her leg and making a pained expression, running the knife down the side as she cut the material of the dry suit away. Jill could see why.

It was swelling about the injury, tanned and human flesh turning sickly gray as veins bulged out and then shifted to something healthier but different than what it had been. Her thigh swelled perceptively as fat became corded muscle beneath her flesh and Jill winced in sympathetic pain as she heard the soft crack of something that must have been bone breaking… and then regrowing in place a moment later.

It slowed, but now she was hobbling, her other leg twitching at times as if it was soon to follow the growth of its partner. No fins or claws yet, but with how she stepped on her tiptoes Jill wouldn’t be surprised if it started to look like her leg soon enough. In either case she wasn’t walking fast.

Not till she finished .

“Oh god, did you not find the vaccine?”

Jill looked up seeing the changes on the other two. They’d avoided injuries and the colder temperatures had helped. But Joanna’s hair was falling out faster than Armando’s and blood ran from Anita’s lips. Behind them she saw triangular rows of sharpened daggers pushing out, misshapen and not fully grown but the goal of her new flesh was evident. For a moment Jill wondered why the T-Abyss would move in such a distinct pattern for all of them.

Think Jill! Those with a strong will and the capacity to envision themselves as they should be will become like gods in the embrace of Orubouros!

Before Wesker’s mad voice whispered in her mind and it all made sense.

They’d been given an inhibitor, enough to slow it down… enough to give them a chance for a mind in a misshapen body they hadn’t wanted. And all of them had had plenty of time to envision the end point of the T-Abyss clearly.

Herself.

No wonder they were taking a fast track towards a particular BOW-type instead of the more uncontrolled and deleterious effects that the T-Abyss had shown before. It was, in a sense, almost a positive outcome. At the very least if the mutations stopped here they’d be able to mostly go on with their lives.

If they stopped of course.

“No, but I have something that will help,” Jill said, taking out the injector. Once more wondering if the fate she was offering was better than death. But only for a moment, as the still cooling corpses around her reminded her how much worse it could be. And the anger inside, hot and hungry, calling towards the oil platform above telling her even louder why it was so important to keep fighting no matter what form that took.

Chapter 15: Chapter 13

Summary:

Jill smells blood in the water and gives chase.
It's do or die time...

Chapter Text

They had questions of course. Not that it changed anything. It was the only option left. Two more injections down and Jill tossed the now empty injector onto the deck. Only time would tell if it saved them, but at least it was another roll of the genetic dice, weighted in their favor.

Now the question was how to proceed.

“Do you have explosives?”

“Some… but given that this stuff they’re pumping up is probably more than a little flammable we shouldn’t need much to get this whole thing going up.”

“Good. We have to stop this here before it gets any worse. Anita,” Jill said as she turned towards the woman, still rubbing her jaw which now looked like it had stretched out slightly with her lips not quite keeping pace with what was happening inside, “you should head back to the helicopter with Jessica. She’s not in any condition to help right now.”

“Heh,” Jessica said, grimacing in place of a smile this time, “yeah, it does look like my sea legs are taking their time.”

While the attempted humor remained, Jill could see how she was fighting back minor aches and pains, her body still pushing towards further mutation, further growth. Part of her almost felt like she deserved it for all the trouble she’d caused before. But then there’d been a startling lack of deaths from that hadn’t there?

“ A viral smuggler with a conscience?” Pity she hadn’t had better sense or a willingness to turn down large paychecks. In any event, that only left two more. Armando’s injuries from before hadn’t slowed him down too much, but if Jessica’s case was any example he might start to have worse issues any moment. Which really left only one option.

“Agent Cascos will help plant the explosives and keep our extraction open. Koproswka and I will follow them in and make sure they don’t escape with whatever they have planned.”

“C-can’t we just leave?” Armando asked, teeth chattering as he rubbed his mutated hand against his other arm. Jill could see how the skin was starting to stick between his fingers, and his pinky ring finger were starting to move as one, the knuckle pulling up and bulking between them as bones started to knot together under his flesh. “We could just report this to the BSAA and let them handle it.”

Jill shook her head. “With how much money Grady probably put away and the amount of time he’s been planning this he’s certainly got buyers lined up and some plan to lay low. If we don’t take him in or take him down this Draug bacteria is going to end up on the market as a new bioweapon or a supposed miracle medication… and I don’t trust it not to have side effects given what I’ve seen of their efforts so far.”

“Yes. The last records down in the lab only said they had managed to expand the genetics that respond cooperatively to infection, not eliminate its other effects.”

“I doubt they cared at this point, just glad that they could run with something that might work.” Jill stood up, shaking off a bit of the snow that had fallen on her shoulders from where she’d been seated on the ship deck. Her tail swayed out, fins stretching as the circulation came back. She felt tired, hungry, and more than a little angry. But she knew she had to end this one way or another before Grady ran and became another shadowy contributor to the spread of the bioweapons she’d dedicated her life to curtailing and controlling.

Her hand tightened upon part of the metal railing she’d been seated next to, tips of her claws pressed on her palm as her jaw tightened and teeth showed. All this death, all this misery. Lives lost… and others irrevocably changed.

And for what?

A pittance of money to sell some miracle cure that by the sound of it might not even do everything it was promised.

She’d had enough of it. They’d only wounded Grady before, lucky bastard that he was. But this time she’d do worse.

Jill could still remember the scent of his blood and fear in the air, and she had no intention of letting up on the chase when he was still so close.

“Well, nothing to it then.” Joanna stood, coming next to Jill as the two of them took the front of the group moving back onto the oil platform.

The rest followed behind, Jessica managing to haphazardly keep pace until they separated on the main deck. Three moved towards the parked helicopter on the other end as the remaining pair continued on towards the looming structure built in and around the pumping station. Large vats, likely filled with the noxious sludge they’d discovered rose up around them but for the moment the biohazards remained both liquid and contained. Solemn mausoleums of not ancient life, but newfound undeath which threatened to drown the frozen waters in their filth.

Jill would enjoy watching it burn once they finished here.

She came before the entrance, heavy double storm doors. A glance at Joanna showed the other agent was ready, though her face looked paler… or grayer than it had before, the clumps of lust hair no longer leaving red patches of irritation but smooth skin. Jill’s eyes, dark and black, showed little of the sympathy she felt as she tried to capture the woman before her in memory. As she was now, frightened of what was before her and what she was becoming but still holding her weapon and at her side. It seemed the least she could do.

“You ready?”

Joanna nodded. “Not getting any younger… or warmer. Not that that’s good for me at the moment. Cholerny-let’s do it already while I still have fingers to shoot them with.”

Jill couldn’t quite keep the smile, and the teeth, from showing as she pulled on the handle and the door thankfully opened. The temperature inside was still cold, but far from the below freezing icebox that surrounded them. The storm doors sealed again as they entered, leaving a side maintenance path to their left, a still locked floor plate leading down, and what Jill presumed to be the way forward dead ahead.

Though of all things a set of gaudy, ornately carved wooden panel doors depicting massive serpent, wrapped around the image of the Earth, its jaws latched onto its own tail.

“Jormungand… fitting, if still strange to see it like this.”

“Rich assholes and their art obsessions,” Jill thought as she grabbed the handle and thankfully felt it rewarded her with a click and swinging open. Grady and his bodyguard had clearly not bothered to lock up behind them. “Different place, different time… same BS.”

The hall behind was much warmer, a comparatively balmy 20 Celsuis or so, with light provided by rows of small bulbs placed along the walls to mimic old fashioned brass lantern ornamentation while including the reliability and control of modern electrics. The floor was wet, snow and ice from their quarry melting into the long red wool carpet that laid along the hard wooden floor. They passed more doors down the long hall, some left open and showing the still utilitarian backdrop onto which this bizarre architecture had been built. Pipes and concrete and steel floors only one room away from the emulation of ancient, old world aristocracy.

Till they reached the end, where the mosaic from before was repeated. Though now the serpent replaced the Earth, forming a strange imitation of the caduceus but with one head, biting upon its tail at the end of the staff.

“Who would build all this?”

“Dying men with more money than sense,” Jill said. Though considering what she’d learned about the founders of Umbrella over the years, there were unfortunately more of their kind than one would have preferred.

Once again the door opened without resistance, welcoming them into a much larger and still unguarded room. An ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling while the walls were decorated in macabre trophies. A stuffed swordfish there, a huge set of antlers over of all things a fireplace (though it looked to be an imitation running off gas and not burning real wood). In one corner, by a door leading to a set of stairs behind reinforced glass and wooden supports led up. In addition, a small elevator had been built for the purpose of going up the floors of this fake opulence hidden among the industrial drabness of the oil platform. Though the centerpiece of the room was likely the massive polar bear pelt, laid out from a long banquet table, silverware untouched but still in perfect order.

Joanna shook her head in disbelief, strands of brunette hair falling to her shoulders as she walked past Jill towards the elevator. “Locked. Looks like we’re walking.”

Jill said nothing in response, sniffing the air. The wood and burning gas covered most of the scents, but Grady had been here. She was going to forget that man anytime soon. There was something else, but then this whole place was given her the creeps. Like everytime she ended up in a place like this frankly did.

“Why couldn’t I just deal with normal serial killers and maniacs? Why did they all have to be crazy Illuminata wannabes with torture fetishes?”

“Ah! It’s not locked,” Joanna said, opening the door at the side and pulling it open. She passed through as Jill continued to look around the room at the dancing shadows cast by the firelight. “You coming Valentine?”

“Sorry, just bringing up old memories.”

The other BSAA agent made an odd expression but then just shrugged her shoulders. Looking up the stairs, gun leveled and ready for any movement.

While the door suddenly came closed and made a loud and awful clicking sound.

“What-gówno! It’s locked?”

Jill reached for the handle to try and pull it open but stopped. She heard a strange tapping sound. Turning around those same dancing shadows twisted in a corner, a humanoid shape becoming visible as the light bent around them and then filled in. Dark black and gray carapace, first two and then four as the extra set revealed the eyes peering at her under short antenna that slid back and close to the skull. Mandibles twitching slightly as he tossed a remote control back and forth between his hands. Before attaching it to the belt at his side and drawing a large knife.

“Well if it isn’t Ms. Valentine. Youngest Delta Force graduate on record… you know I honestly thought it was some PC-crap when they let you in back in the day-”

Something clicked, as if a long forgotten memory had at last come to the surface.

“Captain Conners?”

“Ah you do remember me.”

“Kind of hard to forget the asshole that always found an excuse not to train me,” Jill said, stepping closer and then to the side. Her tail was shifting back and forth as the tension rose.

“Can you blame me? They went and pushed some slip of a girl barely out of basic training onto us. I was sure it was some joke at the time,” he said, head tilting up and down as he seemed to take in her appearance. From the bone white tips of her webbed footclaws, the digitigrade legs that shifted part way to fins as she swam, her more human-like thighs and waist. The musculature and body that showed above that, either through her outfit or the numerous rips and tears that it had acquired and left less to imagine about how much Jill had kept… and how much she had lost, of her former appearance and nature as a human woman. “Though given how you ended up, I guess I was wrong. Maybe you were the right stuff all along.”

She’d have bristled at it in a very simple and base way, were she not certain that despite the old fashioned, and at this point pathetically antagonistic, sexism she’d dealt with from the man back then his eyes weren’t leering at her now but carefully gauging the best way to gut her.

Quite literally like a fish as it were.

“Spare me. The last thing I want is the approval of some traitor that sold out his position for money.”

“Traitor… oh no, I’m not the traitor, at least not the one that betrayed us first. It’s spineless politicians like Graham and the rest that held us back that were the traitors. I saw things Valentine, I knew things. About what Umbrella and the DOD had ready back in the 80s. When we were still pretending that the Cold War was something we couldn’t win, when a nuke was the only thing the Kremlin had to fear.”

He stretched out his empty hand and tightened it into a fist. A second set of shorter, spiky limbs extending from his shoulders in place of wings twitched as he did so.

“We could have made Russia bleed a billion dead soldiers and never risked a single American life. But they were too cowardly to let us use it. Instead we sat on the opportunity until it passed and now every dictator SOB can afford their own pet bioweapons project in the basement.”

Jill continued side stepping around, though she tensed her legs, ready to leap forward. Only to pause at what she saw glinting from Conner’s side. The silver and bone handle of an oversized hand cannon. She didn’t even need to turn her head for her inky-black eyes to catch the empty space just above the fireplace, unnoticed till now, where something on display had been removed. “.44… or heavier?”

In either case that was a problem. These SBOWs were simply put faster than her. Naturally, unnaturally, and if she leapt now it would be a quick draw contest with something that could punch a hell of a hole through her. It would have five shots at the least, but would probably only need three at best to cripple or kill her. And Conner had bragged about his CQC and his firearms proficiency enough that Jill knew better than to chance that outcome.

She needed a way to close the distance and-

She had it.

She just needed a bit of time.

“They’d have nuked us till Kansas glowed green Conner.”

Thankfully she was used to dealing with too talkative psychopaths that thought highly of themselves.

“Ha. Maybe… maybe. Never know now. Times have changed… and so have we.”

His free hand twitched, Jill recognizing by tone of voice alone the danger she was in of him simply drawing and firing now. But he’d taken one more step then he’d needed as he’d walked around the table. And was standing on part of the rug. While she wasn’t.

Her back leg pressed into the foot, claws digging through the wood as her other grabbed onto the rug and pulled it towards her. The table shifting off center as Conner stumbled, his hand moving towards the table instead of drawing his gun. Just as Jill pressed lower, using her tail for further balance and slammed both hands into the table edge and shoved it at him. He stumbled back, his own not as long rear limb helping balance his motion while the not-wings at his shoulders flexed. He moved to draw the gun again, but Jill was already moving by then. Not over the table…

But under it.

He fired despite that, her gamble paying off as the bullet whizzed by her side and splintered the floor. She shot up the moment she heard the discharge, knowing that chambering the next round would take longer than aiming with the augmentation that his mutation had given him. As the table broke in two around her, she grabbed the nearest thing at hand, an empty metal serving tray, and sent it spinning towards him.

He reeled back, hissing in anger as the back appendages stabbed out wildly as she drew close. But Jill felt the tension, the contraction, the building action in his body when he made to move them. It seemed to blaze in her mind each and every time his enhanced nervous system made those new limbs move. Too strange, too unusual to control quickly enough or skillfully enough to overcome her own training.

And she’d had plenty since Delta Force fighting strange creatures with more limbs than they should have had.

Her new body, her new senses, her new strength… it had only polished skillset that had already been there.

“Damn it and stand still!” Conner yelled out, recovered from before and trying to gain distance with his knife. Only for Jill to bait an opening and actually manage to catch him, pulling him in and slamming her head against his. He responded by trying to bite her, mandibles wide.

Pathetic.

How many times had she dealt with zombies (or worse) trying to tear her throat out in the years since Raccoon? Sometimes they even had a knife at the same time too. She twisted around, using her longer tail to stay balanced as she threw Conner into the remains of the dining table and then tried to slam her foot into his chest.

Here he was forced to drop the gun, pushing her attack to the side before making his counter. At her leg.

“Stupid.”

His subordinate had succeeded from luck and her own surprise, but she’d had time to think about how close that short fight in the radio tower had been. And this time she shifted to the side, the harder and darker back deflecting the incoming blade even as his claws failed to do more than superficial damage. Seeing the problem he abandoned the knife next, grabbing onto her leg and bending back, trying to aim his longer tail to strike at her as well.

Jill was ready for this, moving her own to intercept it. She didn’t have a stinger or claw or bladed stick on the end of all that muscle, but she had plenty of it and with it pinned she was able to turn and stamp down. This time striking true, her claws piercing through chitin and flesh and being rewarded with blood and pained sounds from Conner as he scrambled to his feet and tried to claw away.

But he hadn’t learned a damn thing, standing on the bearskin rug from before. Jill yanked it back as she leaped forward, his body falling prone as she in turn fell upon him. They rolled towards the fire place, the arrogant old military man turned amoral mercenary now little more than a hissing panicked thing. All those blades and mandibles doing little to injure or keep her off as she continued to press her earlier advantage. Locking legs around his, pulling arms taut as she slammed his head against the side of the fireplace where they began to sink. Her breath was hot from her nostrils, mouth close to his neck.

Bite.

It was a sudden, strange, and so natural instinct. Not her training, not how she wanted it to end. Even against this man, however repugnant he had become. Though as he struggled to break free, her increasing vice-like pressure coming down perhaps it would have been a mercy by comparison.

Especially when she felt the grating before the fireplace give at their weight and they tumbled into it. Jill rolled out, her skin still damp from before, though parts of her wetsuit took flame as she put the fire out as best she could.

Conner was not so lucky, one of his back limbs stabbing into the fake wood and becoming stuck there. Unable to pull out he screamed as he burned.

And screamed on till Jill found the discarded hunting gun, chambered one more round, and put an end to Captain Conner.

Looking back at the locked door, where Joanna was still trying to kick it down, Jill checked at Conner’s sides till she found the earlier remote. It looked a bit damaged from their fight but sure it would still work.

A push of a button and the elevator lit up.

“Damn.”

“I guess I’ll take the stairs and we’ll meet up?”

“... be careful, Koprowska,” Jill said.

“It’s only the traitorous bastard now,” she said, a grim expression that lacked the teeth but was perhaps not too far from Jill’s own in killing intent. “How much trouble can he be?”

Chapter 16: Chapter 14

Summary:

It's sink or swim time Jill.
Are you ready to do what you were meant to do?

Chapter Text

The elevator ascended slowly. Brass railings encircled her, much as her tail was forced to wound about her feet in the relatively cramped quarters. But despite that rush she still felt to finally end this, that the wait was appreciated. The rush and fear, adrenaline tinged victory that tasted of bitter triumph over a peer opponent was still settling down. Despite the dominance she’d shown in the fight itself it had been close, her superior strength not outmatched by much and the speed and experience of Conner enough to bridge the gap in other circumstances. In the end he’d been cocky, despite knowing what she’d done and achieved he’d chosen to make fair and even then overestimate how much of an advantage he’d have had.

Perhaps he and his team had turned to the shadowy world of modern bioweapons to ply their mercenary work, but whatever training or experience they had gained paled in comparison to her. At best they might have learned second hand about the worst of the worst that Umbrella and its descendants had unleashed onto the world. But Jill had fought more than one TYRANT level threat in her career, some at an extreme disadvantage and even having to extract herself in melee before the utterly overwhelming physical power and endurance ended her.

Hell, she’d dealt with Wesker of all people, and that had been before all of this . Compared to that Conner really had nothing to impress her with once she understood what she was dealing with. She’d even beaten him without having to-

…

Use everything she had at her disposal now. Claws were like knives, her strength was greater but had felt like a natural augmentation to who she had been now, even if somehow deep down she knew that was just a comforting lie she told herself. The tail was new, strange, and alien to the woman she’d been and the humanity that she clung to and some probably argued she had no claim on anymore. But…

Her face reflected in the polished metal mirrors around her. The expressions were there, in a fashion. The experiences of the night had showed she could do, could show more than she had. But she’d allowed herself to remain almost as emotionally deadened over the last year as being Wesker’s slave had felt with the chemical cocktail holding her mind and body in thrall. When she felt happy or gladdened her muscles relaxed, more of her face showing beneath the armored hood, her fins that poked out from that almost blue-black sheath relaxed as humanoid muscles merged with aquatic combinations and tension left her. And by inherited instinct she wanted to smile .

Which showed teeth.

When she’d been worried or sad, frustrated or annoyed, the tension flowed back, the armor tightened as her muscles prepared for action. Anxiety in her form giving way to preparation for action, worry breaking surface in how not relaxed one could notice in those fishy attributes that had grown out of her and despite how much it had (and did, of course it still did… didn’t it?) bothered her, didn’t look as haphazardly welded on as she would have thought given how her condition had come about. BOWs rarely looked as clean or well put together as her, even the vat grown clones had often had irregularities or maladaptive growths. Jill was sleek, slim and muscular in a way that strangely didn’t look overly stressing her body’s size, and lacking anything that took away from her predatory appearance. Which was of course made all the more notable when the natural anxiety or worry she felt about so many things now made lingering memories about how she should look or act give way to phantom sensation to frown, to turn down or press together lips she didn’t really have as such and instead the altered motion of her jaw would, once more show her teeth.

The less said about anger or rage the better, strong excitement and all the rest. As night wore on into twilight shrouded day, she’d been bothering less and less to hold all her frustration in. To keep down the desire to direct her wholly justified fury at those that had caused this disaster and then tried to blame her for it in a slapdash effort to cover their own asses. It brought her back to those first few weeks after the mansion, when she’d had hope that the system would work, that a report on Irons desk would be the start of something.

She’d bared her teeth then, pointed and shouting and wanting to punch that fat asshole right in the face. Of course if she’d known what she knew now, about the payoffs, the allegations of sexual crimes and the years he’d spent in bed with Umbrella, using it as a way to funnel victims to them… or in turn take his own payment of flesh, often young women that-

She’d have drawn her custom piece right then the moment he’d looked at her like she was beneath him and asked if she’d seen the psychiatrist they’d helpfully hired to convince her it was all in her head and blown his brains all over those taxidermy projects the creepy fuck liked so much. Of course now she had a new desire to-

Bite. Lunge forward, teeth bared, jaws open and rip his throat out. Latch down, clench as the bone snaps and his body shakes. Those eyes will widen in terror, capture the look as they stare into her jet-black orbs, till she shakes her head and twists, the blood running down her neck, the taste of his filth on her tongue.

Then pull back, the serrated daggers leaving a wound not even Umbrella’s experimental trauma care centers could piece back together as he falls forward, dead, crimson pooling a new red over the very same report he’d just tossed back in her face.

That would have satisfied her, that would have been a just and righteous kill.

That would have-

New desires, new instincts that didn’t seem as incongruously attached to old primate drives as she would have liked to think. Savagery and its potential had long been part of human genetic history, of their evolution…

There was even a theory about it, she’d skimmed the article while waiting at the airport before the flight to that last damnable mission to track Spencer down and catch Wesker as well. The Progenitor Viruses seemed to unlock something deep inside them. Something that had been there all along, and the odd and almost natural tendency to meld with other branches of the evolutionary tree was part of that. If you were already harkening back to epochs lost in geological scales, why not take a side path down a cousins branch and borrow a bit? Maybe an eye, or a claw. Perhaps a tail or scaly skin?

She’d found herself more partial to the gills than she’d have ever dreamed before.

The elevator ended its slow ascent, three stories up, the door opening with a click and showing a hallway that turned about the room below. She saw it only briefly, the still smoldering body visible through a circular window as she slowly stalked forward. Cautious on the carpet, feeling expensive threads rub beneath the underside of her tail as she moved forward. Slower still between those sections, trying to muffle the slight sounds of her footclaws on the wood and more so on the metal as she pushed forward.

The stairs from below didn’t connect up to the elevator like she had hoped, instead seeming to rise up into the more industrial and traditional portions of the oil platform onto which this bizarre construction had been installed. Jill passed a few wooden doors, opening them up and seeing metal and maintenance shafts or more normal hallways past what might have been offices or rooms for monitoring equipment. Surprisingly she hadn’t noticed any security systems yet. Not that she could see at least.

She saw the stairs at last, the door already ajar. But no sign of Agent Koprowska.

“Damn. She wouldn’t… would she?”

“What would you do Jill, ten years ago? Finding out someone betrayed you, someone infected you. Feeling your humanity slip away, desperate for a cure and hunting for payback even if that fails.”

Of course. She’d kept going on her own.

Jill sped up, rushing towards the door at the end of the hall. Pausing for only a moment before she opened it up, wishing desperately that she’d kept that gun. She knew why she’d dropped it, the trigger too sensitive, her fingers- claws yet unwieldy enough that it would be more of a hindrance than an aid to try and use it in a firefight. Still it left her feeling vulnerable to breach into an unknown room with no means of striking from range if needed. Like a nightmare of giving a public speech naked, she simply felt unprepared and embarrassed by the fact.

Though given how much light gray flesh showed through the rips and tears of her outfit now she wasn’t far from the later either. Not quite the civilized BSAA outfit and with her wounds regenerating over with nary a scar it now almost looked like she'd been normal, more human-like to start and the savagery of it all had grown out and torn through her identity. But as she took one breath and then battered through the door her nerves were calm and despite it all she felt more like herself than she had in a long time. The mission took precedence, the focus (the hunt) was what mattered. She just had to strike first and strike fast!

Not that there was anything to strike at.

The room was large, but not as large or opulent as she might have expected for the current home of one of the richest men on Earth. Space taken over by medical equipment and monitors sat beside the bed while a motorized wheelchair rested next to it. Oxygen tanks attached to it while others were equipped to the emergency system on the bed itself. Tubes ran into his right arm, while wires threaded under the sheets. His body was bloated, large and heavy set before and whether tumorous or merely some other aspect of his declining health he’d lost rather little weight on the whole. His head had been shaven close, though wisps of hair remained. What might have once been a sharply maintained mustache and beard looked scraggly and wild about his unmoving lips.

He also seemed to be thoroughly dead.

Jill moved towards the bed, looking at the flatline EKGs. While closer she could smell the unhealthy odor of his blood and body, covered up by a strong mix of chemicals which must have been keeping him alive so far. But there was more…

She tasted something else, and looking at the IV bag saw a reddish discolored liquid filling it. A quick check of his arm saw where the veins had started to bulge out, angry red and black.

“So that was the plan.” Obviously if Grady thought he could make more money he wasn’t going to let Reynolds keep his miracle cure… and that meant making sure he didn’t live long enough to miss it. Making his death look like the side effect of stupidly injecting a virus would fit with the plans Jill had seen them make so far. She let his hand fall back as she thought, “If I had just died like they planned… or it had never leaked out into the ocean they might have set up a more convincing ruse. Even with his connections this would be hard to sell.”

Grady was clearly panicking to be-

Suddenly the arm leapt up, clutching at Jill’s forearm as she tried to pull away. Reynold’s mouth opened, a wet and warbling cough that shook his whole frame. Bloodshot eyes speckled with black spots looked out at her in confusion as he tried to speak.

“You son… bitch… I’ll bury… I’ll bury… you-”

Jill pulled his surprisingly strong grip off of her as the rictus of death took hold once more. His body shuddered into stillness soon enough. Obviously he’d been too sick for even whatever Grady had injected into him to help if this had happened.

But that didn’t tell her where he was or where Koprowska might be.

She turned around checking the room once more. There didn’t seem to be an exit, just a desk with a computer sitting on it and several more expensive bits of wall decor that had been installed to further hide the fact that this was hospital room in an impromptu secret biohazard zone and not the million dollar mansion it pretended to be. Still it was open and that alone drew her attention. Jill bent over, and moved the mouse. Groaning (or growling) in irritation as the password screen popped up.

“Any help?”

Of course the dead man said nothing, but it did focus Jill’s mind. Arrogant, rich, probably sociopathic.

Not smart, and a terrible judge of character even compared to some people she’d met.

Probably meant that he’d just picked something close, personal, and befitting the massive ego that led him to think that he had the right to sacrifice the lives of his employees and strangers to make himself live just a little bit longer.

She tried Leviathan , but got nothing. But then she thought back to those odd code names. Grady wouldn’t have given those out… which left their true employer.

Jormungand.

“God, you probably thought you were clever.”

The emails didn’t tell her anything, and she’d been right about the security cameras. Most of those were-

Outside, like the one pointed at another helipad on top of this very building. Where Grady was loading things onto it. There was no sound, but she could tell that Koprowska must have said something as she came up behind him. He turned slowly as more mute words were exchanged.

And then she did the sensible thing and shot him.

Only to Jill’s surprise he didn’t fall, stumbled back but reached for his sidearm. The BSAA agent fell, clutching at her leg as Grady began to walk closer, already shaking off the bullet wounds like they didn’t even happen.

The limp.

Or lack of it.

“Grady, you impossibly stupid asshole!” Jill cursed, going back and seeing a control switch of some kind next to the camera monitors in the system. She heard a panel sliding open behind her and ran towards it. Not waiting for the mechanism to finish sliding open she grabbed hold and pulled. Something broke as her muscles strained and she heard a metallic whine from the system as she ran forward. Up ramp and then out into the night and cold again, bursting through the glass storm door before the landing pad as she did so. Grady took a step back, but only just before grabbing hold of Joanna’s hair. What of it that remained and placing the gun directly against her temple.

“Stop right there Valentine!”

She did, though she also made no effort to hide the maw of teeth that showed as she stood up and stared back at him. Hands going to her sides, claws twitching with barely restrained fury.

“What are you even going to do Grady? Run off and hope you can pay for a cure to what you did to yourself?”

“What I did-what you freaks forced me to do! All you had to do was die Valentine, but you couldn’t even do that right.” He was spitting in anger as he yelled back, trying to drag Joanna towards the helicopter. He’d already started the engine before loading, but it was only slowly spinning now, warming up for what he’d hoped to be a long flight to safety and untold riches in the future. “And I’ll be fine. They fixed it, finally made one of these things that’s useful for doing more than making ugly monsters like you.”

“Traitorous gówno-aah!”

“And future freaks like you Koprowska,” Grady said as he yanked her back hard, blood running from her brow as some of her hair that was still rooted in was yanked out.

All the while Jill’s left hand had pulled out a small cylinder from before, back on the oil tanker. Aiming it towards Grady and waiting for him to focus his attention on her again.

Which didn’t take long.

“Now back off-BACK OFF Valentine and you can swim off with this Polish mermaid and find some rock to hide under.”

“Or what?” Jill asked, placing her taloned thumb over the button.

“Or what?! Or-or I’ll kill her and kill you. I’m a trained agent and I can’t die!”

“Let’s test that.”

She turned it on. The UV light blinded Grady as he was staring directly at her when it went off. The soft flesh of his eyes smoked while the blood from before caught on fire and he screamed out in pain. Joanna fell away and rolled back as Jill took one step after another towards him. Ducking down as they passed under the blades of the helicopter she slashed at his unprotected stomach and the light made the wound burn. He tried to aim at her but she grabbed at his arm and squeezed, twisting as she did till she felt the bones shift and he dropped the gun.

“Wha-but… the report-”

“They only managed to alter the likelihood of a positive outcome, not remove the weaknesses.” If anything Jill suspected they might have made them worse. It wouldn’t have surprised her given her past experiences.

Joanna had stood up, grabbing her fallen gun and limped over. Though whether from the injury or more changes it was hard to tell. The gunshot in her thigh had stopped bleeding but the area looked swollen now, her pants stretched tight as if the flesh wanted to rip through. While her head had gone almost completely bald, her ears were now shrinking into her skull. To add to that when she spat on Grady blood and a tooth came from her mouth.

A human tooth anyway.

“Fucker! You do all this, infect us… all for money? And then infect your boss too? Traitorous dog, worms would throw you up!”

Jill just shook her head as she took the light off him for a moment. “Did you really think that, what, making it look like he injected himself with the T-Abyss would be enough to hide how messed up all this is?”

“Would have just waited… but I ran out of time,” Grady said, collapsing against the side of the helicopter, pained eyes looking around still for some way out of this situation. Though when he found none he just let out a slight coughing laugh and continued, “Besides, I didn’t just give him some of the T-Abyss too.”

What.

“What did you do Grady?”

“I gave him what he paid for, you stupid fish. I just cut it with a couple other viral samples to hide the origin and-”

A horrible, horrible wet sound of shifting flesh and meat came from behind them. Followed by deep and guttural roar. Heavy thuds pounding on metal came from below and sped up towards them. While a hoarse voice screamed out through the abandoned complex as it drew nearer.

“Gr-aady!”

“You-you impossible stupid-you mixed unknown viral samples?!”

Jill shared Koprowska’s shock. This was beyond unpredictable and dangerous.

“I figured I’d be gone by the time it mattered…”

He burst out from where Jill had come, his bulk rolling with him in motion. Eyes swollen, milky white in one while the other was overly grown and pitch black. One arm swelled violently into claw like appendage, while between the pincers a tendril of pink dragged along the ground. The other was still bulging outward, the excess fat expanding into steelhard muscles as his body was wracked with the pained sounds of shifting organs and breaking bones.

Once again Jill was reminded how preposterously lucky she was that her various vaccines and treatments had slowed down whatever Wesker had intended enough that she’d come out of it sane and, easily by comparison, aesthetically pleasing and symmetrical. And not like the maddened creature, already twisted into insanity beyond even that which had driven him to follow the faint hope of immortality from Umbrella’s ashes in the first place.

“GRA-AADY!” He bulldozed past Jill as Koprowska leaped to the side and rolled out of the thunderous mass of meat and bone. Grady’s last moments were one of terror filled suffocation, the clawed arm pinning him while the other throbbed and grew, long claws extending out like serrated razors from a webbed hand and ripping him open from his throat on down. The metal wrenched behind him, part of the helicopter's door torn off as Reynold’s yanked his claws out, spilling the crates that Grady had been loading.

Including one marked with the logo for Tricell which fell to the floor, popped open, and spilled a strange sea-green canister out.

“‘O jejku! The vaccine?”

Jill saw it too.

And so did Reynolds.

“M-ine,” he growled out, trying to pull out his claw twice, the tentacles already wrapped around part of the helicopter. Before kicking the whole thing, causing it to buckle and shift to the side. The spinning blades hit wires and cables as it did, sending sparks and whips of metal around them. Joanna ducked and crawled away as Reynolds moved closer and closer to the T-Abyss vaccine rolling from side to side on the landing pad. “My-my cure…”

“No it’s not yours big guy,” Jill shouted, tackling into his side before a cable slammed into her and she went spinning away. Reynolds roared in response and moved towards the vial. Just as Jill managed to grab hold of it.

And the claws slammed down near her neck. Missing the first time, but on the second the pink tendril, now more muted gray color as it swelled and grew in proportion to everything else, wrapped around her neck and dragged her towards him. She pinned her right arm between the pincers and began to kick and claw, trying to pull herself out of his grip.

“My cu-uuure-URGH!” His mouth exploded, tongue lashing out as a web of pink tendrils. While the helicopter’s blade cut and stuck on the cables. And the motor spun the whole airship around instead.

Back end sweeping Reynolds and Jill off of the landing pad. The abyss welcoming them home.

The water's impact was hard, almost enough to drive her unconscious this time. Like slamming into a wall of concrete at dozens of miles per hour. But that only gave her a moment of reprieve before she felt the tentacle tighten again and had to continue fighting off Reynold’s efforts to stab her with his claw or tear her in half. All the while the rolling waves of the Arctic swallowed them up, sinking down into the water. For a moment her feet claws caught on the metal supports of the oil platform, but then they pushed away together, nothing but the depths beneath them.

And nothing but water above.

Her hood slipped over as she felt the probing spikes of what had been the oil baron’s tongue try and invade her mouth or tear into the softer flesh of her face. Not that she needed eyes here, there was nothing to see by, no light above and they were sinking fast into the utter dark of the ocean itself. Her body shifted, legs more like fins as the adaptable cartilage armoring made bones move in odd ways, but that barely seemed to help. He was too massive to swim with, still dragging her down and sinking like a rock as he continued his assault, ceaselessly trying to murder her and take a cure that wouldn’t do anything to save him now.

Her mouth parted, hidden though it was, and bubbles of air escaped her lungs as the water flowed in. She tried to breathe, but could not. Her gills were locked. The tendril, wrapped in digestive mucus and acid and even now pulsating outward to consume her was smothering her, tightened around the very way she breathed so naturally when underwater. She hadn’t even thought it possible to choke to death like this, but now she could feel her body weakening, the pounding of her heart growing louder and louder…

Like a beating drum…

Or a loud gun, the vibrations in her hands moving through her whole body…

Each pulse came louder and harder as the darkness closed in. The vice grip about her neck and gills left no breath from the ocean. Her jaws opened in smothered scream, lungs already filled with water but going the wrong way as she kicked and thrashed. Far above her the surface lay, now lost in trackless depths of water.

All she heard was that pounding, thunderous and loud as she felt herself fading away-

------

The sound of the gun echoed loudly through the range. Her webbed claws held her custom Samurai Edge tightly in a four fingered grip, pulling the trigger with practiced ease. Down the range she watched the spread of bullets appear. Tight, focused. Center of chest first.

She nodded at her performance, sent the target down to the next increment and reloaded. Again, this time headshots. Further off, smaller target. She took aim and… fired!

Straight and true.

Again and again.

Each shot was dead on, smooth operation from firing through the recoil into the next. When the clip ran dry she’d barely used up her allocated time and hit the button to bring the target up. Jill couldn’t help but show the razor smile as she saw another near perfect score come up.

“Pretty good Valentine,” Wesker said from behind her as she took the ear muffs off. Wearing them took a bit of work, but as long as she kept her hood back they fit over where her ears were more or less and worked as intended. Wesker had already removed his, though aside from that he was dressed strangely. Leather jacket, sunglasses inside the police station…

“Going out clubbing later Wesker?” Jill asked, though she already knew the answer. Burton liked to joke that Wesker was even ‘more of a wet fish than you’ when it came to social situations so she doubted it was more than just another odd little eccentricity of her commanding officer here at STARs.

“No just checking on your progress. Excellent form. Muscle control and dexterity not impacted by infection at all-”

Wait this was wrong this was-

This was what he actually said .

“-neurological damage is minimal if any and compensated by total merger to a Progenitor Strain. Aquatic adaptation looks positive, gills seem to have grown in well and,” Wesker moved up, deep into her personal space as Jill backed up. Tail hitting the boundary of the shooting range behind her as she suddenly felt unclothed and naked, even though her STAR’s uniform was on from foot bracers to the jacket with her back fin poking through. Wesker grabbed at her face, fingers rubbing her snout in a way she did not like and opening her jaw to look inside. “Teeth fully replaced, secondary row ready to grow in when needed and substance for tertiary present as-”

“Get the fuck off me!”

She shoved Wesker back, where he hit the wall. His glasses fell away, red and glowing eyes looking at her as he continued to speak.

“Strength and endurance have also increased, adaptation for deep sea environments complete. Loss of mammalian characteristics went smoothly.” Wesker glanced at her chest, the STARs uniform slim enough that the contours of her body weren’t masked as they would be if she were wearing heavier combat armor. “Vestigial remnants remain, size is larger than expected. Possible psychological impact? Desire of host to appear attractive to former species winning out over new nature in part?”

She lunged forward, teeth bared and claws out. One grabbed Wesker by the throat and lifted him up while the other sunk into the drywall nearby. Close, but not quite drawing blood yet.

He didn’t even seem to notice, other than choking briefly as he spoke.

“Will possibly need further testing… ah-reproductive viability might still extend to non-infected. The Oroborus should compensate from that in survivors-”

“What the hell are you talking about!?”

Wesker looked at her with a strangely sad smile, quite unlike the smug looks of superiority she expected.

“What you forgot.”

“I didn’t forget anything you bastard,” Jill growled back, teeth showing and breath close to his face.

“You forgot that I don’t make mistakes.”

That hit like a blow to the core. The lights seemed to dim as the whole building shook, her body off balance as she felt faint and came back glaring even fiercer at the phantom in her grip.

“You did this time! You died.”

“Yes, regrettable. But we’re not talking about me Jill… we’re talking about you. Do you really think that with complete access to your genetics and all the time in the world I accidentally turned you into this?”

“If you did it on purpose, then why? It didn’t help you… it couldn’t have helped-”

“It was to be a gift.”

She almost fell that time, dropping Wesker lower and having to support herself against him, her anger clouded now with a confusion and shock so complete it threatened to make her faint. But still she held on, unable and unwilling to loosen her grip on these answers she had so long repressed.

“I told you-”

You’ve done so well…

“-that I was going to make a world set free of weakness, of the limitations of nation and petty morality-’

To have survived Raccoon and all their efforts… a shame you weren’t taken for the Wesker program. Maybe the old man would have found his Superhuman at last.

“-with your added immunity and natural resistance I realized that to leave you out of my plans would be great disservice to all the potential you had shown.”

She was speechless for a moment, breathing in and out. Panting as she tried to calm the pounding of her heart and the weakness in her limbs. “But why… why this? This… thing is my body?”

“Excella wanted to be a… ugh, a Queen with me. But I could tell she was just another pretender, another rich and self-obsessed fool like Spencer that had deluded themselves into thinking that mere material wealth could be a substitute for true power and excellence. Not like me. Not like you .”

“So why not make me like you if you wanted a Queen or whatever.”

“I didn’t. I told you-”

Does that woman really think her charms can work on me?

“-that my only love is myself. My own self-improvement. And my gift to the world was to let them all improve as I had.”

“Or die.”

“Some would live. You did. And more I knew that if my new world was to be populated it would have to be more… efficiently done. Only being able to live on land? What a sad and sorry limitation.”

He shook his head, bits of plaster falling down onto his hair as the roof shook. Jill ignored it, ignored the pain in her chest and slammed him against the wall again.

“That’s it. You turned me into a fish because you, what, you just felt like it?”

“It was the greatest gift I could give. Lordship over the oceans, you as its new queen. In time I assumed you would gather people descended from similar stock. I could provide a starter population once matters had settled. Or you could create them. While it holds no appeal to me, I wagered Chris would be open to it and I hadn’t planned on him catching up to me after fighting you.”

Her claws sunk into his neck, silencing him as the lights went out and only the red glow of his eyes stood out in the shadows.

“Well you screwed up. You died and-”

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

The room seemed unreal, shifting beneath her as her feet started to give way.

“If you were half as strong as you were supposed to be you wouldn’t be dying now.”

“I’m not- I’m fine,” Jill lied. Feeling the pain in her chest, the suffocating tightness that surrounded her neck even as her claws tightened on Wesker’s.

“Perhaps I did make a mistake,” Wesker said as he looked away from her for a moment. “The Jill Valentine I chose wouldn’t be about to get killed by some sad old man afraid of dying.”

She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Just coughing wetness as the lack of air hit her here. The lack of water through her gills outside.

“Stop being afraid of what you are Jill, of what I made you… you were meant for so much more than being some sad test subject for lesser minds to gawk at. I made you to rule!”

Her jaw gaped wider, extending out slightly as the full size became apparent and she tried to breath, tried to close it, tried to-

Bite

“You were meant to be strong… unstoppable. To claim the waters as your own by claw and tooth-”

BITE

“You just have to-”

Her jaws snapped shut around Wesker’s neck, guttural sound of blood flowing through his savaged airway before she tore him open.

And yet he had a smile on his face…

------

She wrenched her hand down, feeling the claw snap and mutilate some of her fingers as she moved.

She didn’t care. Instead she felt her hood pull back, her jaws opening wide in the absolute darkness of the abyss and slamming down around the probing tongue that had been trying to attack her. She tore loose, before biting again, closer to Reynold’s face, or what it might have been.

She saw not in colors but in blood, the scent, the flow, the sound. She heard the muted pounding of his heart below the savage fury of her own. She tasted the electric stir of his muscles and his organs and every part of her, every fiber of her being screamed to silence them.

She bit again, teeth gouging against his face as one eye burst and skin was pulled from bone. Her right hand was reforming, changing as her claws sunk into skin that was trying to armor itself up against her even as her assault continued. Not fast enough, as she came loose at last, the tentacle unable to hold her.

And then she really sunk her teeth into him. Her jaw closed around the armored arm, the chitin plates of the forming exoskeleton buckling and breaking. Then the flesh beneath it, soft and spilling blood into the water and into her mouth. And then yet harder as she felt the bone crack and break. He hammered against her, trying to knock her loose and only managed to make a few teeth pop out and sit in the wounds before she readjusted her mouth’s grip. And gills free, opening and closing as life giving oxygen flooded her, she pumped her fins and tail and began to spin.

Down.

Further and further.

Faster and faster.

Over a hundred meters and still falling, a trail of crimson staining the water as the passed, cartwheeling to the depths. Her free hand tearing and ripping as she opened up the chest of the BOW he’d become and saw without eyes the organs that had swollen so profusely within. For a moment her jaw loosened, letting the clawed arm go, broken and useless. He tried to bat her off with the other, but she turned and swam at him like a torpedo, jaw open and snapping shut on his neck. Back into the spin, faster now, as she felt his slowing pulse in her mouth and tore open anything she could from within him.

She felt the blood slow.

She felt the regeneration of the bacteria pause.

She felt him die at last.

And then, and only then, did she relax her jaw, open wide, and let him drop. Sinking still and silent into a watery grave.

“Next time try chemo,” Jill thought, gills opening and closing as she swam in place. Water above and water below, nothing else before her and nothing to threaten her. Nothing that could threaten her. The vial in her four fingered hand starting to crack from the pressure.

Though the number of digits took her away, pausing as she checked the other and saw that her claws hand narrowed, the webbing extending and potentially what had been her index finger separating out again as she’d broken bones and limbs in her furious assault on her opponent. It was still different than before but… better .

“Damn it… he really did get one last win, didn’t he?” Wesker’s plans had been sociopathic to the extreme and frankly insane, but when it came to smaller projects… well, he wasn’t Umbrella’s pet wizkid and labrat in one for nothing. In a way he did make a Queen of a new world, just not the one he wanted and one Jill intended to spend the rest of her life fighting for.

Though what would her world look like, what was the world in general going to be like, going forward? The viruses were still out there, the cures more effective but less perfected than anyone had wanted.

Would there be a place for her on the surface, or would she forever be a creature made for these depths?

Idle thoughts for idle swimming, but she was soon to breach the surface. Rising from the water, the partially broken vial in hand, she would climb into the helicopter with the rest. Half naked, exhausted, but triumphant.

And that was how her mission ended, with the oil platform detonating behind them as they flew back towards the cruise ship while radioing in for support.

“Not bad for the first one since Wesker.”

Chapter 17: Epilogue

Summary:

And so it ends, clear skies and open waters.
'Gill' Valentine living her best life.
Though there may yet be things that rise from the depths...

Chapter Text

“And that should be that. Welcome back to the land of the living Ms. Valentine. Officially, as far as the government is concerned.”

Jill wasn’t quite sure why the DSO director had taken the time away from his likely busy schedule to meet her personally, but she could guess. She’d only really heard of Leon Kennedy until recently despite their shared paths almost crossing in Raccoon, but the man had made clear in their last meeting earlier that week that Simmons was headhunting for her to join the agency. She planned to turn him down, but not before he greased some bureaucratic wheels for her.

Namely by getting her IDs reissued and social security number active again. Technically he’d thrown in a driver’s license as well, though she questioned the logic of that one. Her vision wasn’t actually bad, just a bit different in some odd ways. The tail of course was a problem that she hadn’t quite solved when riding in most normal vehicles. At best it would be a tight, and pinching, fit.

Though she’d probably wait on dealing with those sorts of things.

Her re-commissioning into the US branch of the BSAA had all but been official already, and technically she’d been functioning as an on-site agent and coordinator since early after getting back to this side of the Atlantic. The European BSAA had been glad to be rid of her as they were busy trying to clean house as the fallout from Leviathan Chemicals and Quint Grady came to light. Not that they would have had a choice, Chris was probably ready to launch a one man mission when he caught wind of what had gone down over the last couple days as the teams came in and quarantined the ship, crew, and surviving BSAA agents.

They’d used what remained of the vaccine on themselves and spread it through the air vents of the ship, already needed as by the time they’d gotten back some of the survivors had already started to show signs from either direct exposure in the original release or from wandering out of the lower decks to see what had happened when the sounds of firefights suddenly came to an end.

It had seemed to stop further mutations.

At first.

By then the BSAA had shown up and since a third of the passengers had been from the US they’d pushed for return there instead of being quietly shifted to some quarantine camp where their treatment would come down to a few dozen approved antiviral drugs and a bullet at the end if it didn’t work. Given what a complete international embarrassment it was turning into they were more than willing to slide on protocol for once. Before they even made port biohazard gear equipped medics had shown up carrying cases of current generation inhibitors stamped with the labels from the BSAA and off-loaded by supply helicopters from Blue Umbrella.

She’d met Leon in person for the first time around then, as even the DSO was busily trying to get ahead of this before it hit the newscycle. Thankfully there hadn’t been much need to debrief on what she would say, not that she intended to budge on anything. Leon might be a company man now, a long way from a hopeful cadet thinking they’d solve the Arklay mountain disappearances, but she still had principles as stiff as her spine (and long as her tail). But with the source of the Arctic incident clearly caused by mismanagement and corruption in the BSAA, the European branch at that, the intention was to clearly and publicly lead with that at first opportunity.

Oh, those old men in Paris probably hated her when she got in front of a camera, shrouded in shadows as they’d said she had been affected by the outbreak and wanted to remain anonymous. The only lie in her statement, she couldn’t have cared less at that point what the tabloids thought about her appearance. Let ‘em make a thousand shitty Jaws jokes, she relished the chance to shine a light on the whole dirty affair and know that the guilty parties were running scared.

Those she hadn’t gotten to personally filet with her own claws as it were.

Once they hit land she found herself among friends, those she’d know and those she’d never met. It was surprising to hear that Chris had never really stopped singing her praises to his new team and they were honestly cordial and polite on first meeting despite it all and only warmed up from there. She spent more time at their barracks than in quarantine, ate cheap chinese takeout by the tub full, and relished every moment of it. She slept on a spare couch, legs and tail laid out over the side and caught up on a series of pirate films she’d been either too busy or lost to have seen before.

Even better was getting her damn gun back again, Chris pulling it out of storage. With four fingers instead of three it was a bit easier to use, taking less modifications to the pistol than just getting used to her grip again. With clothes that fit, and weren’t a skin tight wetsuit that had barely covered anything by the time she’d finally been picked up, she was finally starting to feel like everything just fit again. Even when she walked out of the shower, gazing at her reflection in the mirror the self hatred for being too weak for failing to stop what had happened to her and others was gone.

She knew what she was capable of now, recognized her strength and will had preserved despite it all.

And if another Wesker tried to screw with her, she’d bite their damn head off.

“So have you considered my offer?”

“Right, here it comes,” Jill thought, keeping a neutral and closed mouth expression on her face. “Yes, but I’m still getting used to things. I think I’ll stick with the BSAA for now, though I do appreciate the offer.”

“No offense taken,” Simmons replied with the practiced smile of a politician. “Though you might get more in the future. You’ve come back as quite the celebrity now that the full story of Raccoon is declassified and this latest incident. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ask you to help train upcoming agents in a few years.”

Jill tried not to laugh at that.

“I’m not sure what I could teach would be that helpful to some of them.”

The smile stayed, but something about it bothered her in a way she couldn’t catch. “You never know. The narrative on SBOWs and mutation research is changing. One day an upcoming GI Jane at Coronado might request the Valentine treatment.”

The rest of the conversation had been simple pleasantries before he left, but Jill was still stunned from that. She’d heard that he was something of a radical in helping support the legalization (or re -legalization) of biotech research but even then that was a crazy far step. Chris didn’t completely trust him, and neither did she, but it was statements like that which had her wondering what his angle really was. If that was just his idea of a joke, trying to imply that she was so aspirational (or god, attractive ) that someone would want to not only be like her but look like her still was a pretty odd direction to go.

Besides, while she might have taken to this like, well, a fish to water in the end, she knew others were having trouble.

------

Dr. Radame’s Confidential Report:

The examination of J. Valentine and the other T-Abyss subjects brought in has been fascinating. Her body achieved total cooperative synthesis to multiple strains of the Progenitor Viruses, likely the source for her exceptional regenerative ability and their stability. Normally TYRANT class BOWs (of which J. Valentine almost qualifies, perhaps a TYRANT-lite?) show unpredictable mutation even in the best of cases, but J. Valentine has adaptive regenerative properties that continuously move back to a stable homeostasis in her body without tumorous growths or vestigial remnants.

Even by aesthetic judgements her body has a symmetry of form and function that is quite impressive by comparison to other samples from the same viral line. While A. Graham developed similarly her case was a fortuitous accident by comparison to J. Valentine who was engineered to be an almost perfect post-human aquatic killing machine. A shame so much of A. Wesker’s data remains lost to us, I am sure the details on how he designed J. Valentine’s body would be enlightening.

The other subjects from the initial outbreak and attempted viral inhibition have mirrored her development over time. They’d already passed 35-40% genetic drift from human normative standards by the point they were recovered with physiological changes held back by psychological conditioning and the antibodies and vaccines they’d been given. By Director’s approval I altered further inhibitors to instead optimize mild catalyst events so we could observe the remainder of their transformations smoothly over a period of six to eight weeks.

Development went smoothly, and while they lack the hyper-regeneration of J. Valentine this data proves with absolute certainty that at least this template of the T-Abyss can now be reproduced at will should we desire it.

------

“I miss hair.”

Anita felt like rolling her eyes, not that it was particularly easy to tell when she did with the mostly black orbs in her head. They did have pupils of course, it was just hard to see with how their faces looked now, short or longer protruding snouts, hoods of fleshy armor layering just above their brows where the hair Joanna was complaining about had once been. She turned to face her, her almost pearly white face, speckled with black dots and blotches along the edge and with a few at the tip of her snout opening in an exasperated sigh as the rows of shiny white razors were revealed in her mouth.

“And I miss having teeth… real teeth. Chewing with these things has me biting myself half the time still.”

Joanna folded her arms against her chest, slight and shorter gray fins past her elbows sticking out as she did so and returned the look with an irritated glare. Looking down at Anita, their once equal heights shifted as one shot up a lot and the other not quite so much. Joanna Kropowska was now almost eye (and fin) level with Valentine and none too pleased that even if she had access to her clothes (she didn’t) they’d take a lot more than some new cuts and a bit of tailoring to fit her now.

“I also miss looking like a woman.”

“Oh god, this again…”

“Jäkla , have you looked at yourself Joanna? I think that part looks fine, problem is finding a dress that fits right.” Internally Anita thought to herself, “If anything I’m in the best shape of my life. Didn’t have abs this good when I was on the national swim team.”

The lack of a belly button took a bit of getting used to, but she was starting to like it honestly. Weird, but in a good way compared to other things.

“Easy for you to say. Yours look bigger for some preposterous reason.”

“My what-Joanna, we are not going to stand in the locker and talk about that like teenage girls,” Anita said, turning tail and walking towards the exit as she finished adjusting her modified uniform. She paused, not turning so the lighter blue back of her body was still facing Joanna as she spoke, “And besides, you don’t have anything I don’t. It’s… what did you say-ah, vestigial , right?”

“Which is what makes it so silly that you look better than-”

“Hey ladies, are you done in there?”

“Stay out Armando!” They both shouted almost in tandem as the pointer face of their one remaining male teammate peaked around the entrance. Armando Cascos quickly stepped back, barely a hint of his shorter body showing as he did. While they’d both gained several centimeters of height at a minimum it barely looked like he’d grown larger at all. Even Anita now stood almost a head taller than him.

Which had actually been funny, as some of the doctors examining them had pointedly reminded them that they should refrain from indulging in any drives that might come up. As if the first thing any of them were likely to do was go off with Armando of all people and start repopulating the planet with fishmen. Joanna had apparently given the medic a good fright as she couldn’t help but grinning like a mad woman and laughing, her jaws open wide to the reddish black dots along the sides of her face where freckles had once been.

Apparently she’d then gone off about how even as a fish she could do better than that.

“Still he’s right. We have to get out of here. Valentine is coming by to discuss some options for us.” The European BSAA was still in turmoil and several of their home nations had rather stringent laws very hastily drawn up banning SBOWs from stepping foot inside their borders. But they might be able to take up temporary residence and temporary positions with the American side of the agency. At the very least it would give them something to do now instead of just sitting around while doctors poked and prodded and said “My, how interesting” at their conditions.

And weird as it was to say, she was actually looking forward to the chance to work with Valentine again under better conditions, if not necessarily drier.

------

There is definitely a component of psychological reinforcement with their transformations. Several passengers on the Lady Aurora were selected for placebos or catalysts instead of inhibitor treatments and we observed that those that were aware of what J. Valentine looked like developed toward that even without the antibody treatment acting as an additional template. When kept ignorant variations involving other deep sea vertebrates began to develop with the inhibitor facilitating slower viral adoption and BOW transformation.

Ultimately the sample of passengers which had been exposed to the T-Abyss was found lacking, so with Director approval an additional forty were injected with small amounts during their initial quarantine for further study of variations, adaptation, and the use of the currently produced inhibitors. Study of those subjects remains undergoing, with some allowed to partially mutate so as to observe the varying stages of stability for the T-Abyss before we implement it in other cases.

Regardless, A Jacobs, J. Koprowska, and A. Cascos have developed into entirely healthy and stable variations of the Scarmiglione-variant, showing a preponderance of genetic material from the Lamnidae family with traces of several other vertebrates. My hypothesis is that we may in fact be seeing a repeat of the Ravencroft Phenomena, where a shared genetic template combined with an imprint from a pre-existing SBOW donor is leading them towards an expected end.

See the contrasting developments in the Plagas SBOWs working for Leviathan Chemicals compared to those that had direct contact with A. Graham.

Note, this is not to be confused with the possibility of passive control or hierarchical system developing among the Plagas derived SBOWs. That, if true, is likely a side effect of mammalian and insectile instincts merging together and A. Graham’s presence as the origin and oldest representative of this type. If this exists, it is likely that A. Graham might in fact not even be aware of the effect she would be having on those around her.

This does lead to an interesting conclusion that once we produce a desired variant we only need make use of that variant when conditioning further subjects in order to drastically increase the chances of successful viral adoption and mutation.

Further investigation will be required with Director’s approval.

------

Her nose still felt weird.

It didn’t look weird, but it sure felt weird.

But whatever drug they’d given her had managed to not just stop the slow and steady pace of her body out of humanity but reverse it. With a bit of surgical help.

Though there should have been scars shouldn’t there?

“I’m still infected, aren’t I?” Jessica looked at the package on the table, her most recent delivery from her new benefactors. She should have ended up in prison or bartering for a way out based on what she could sell them or tell them about black market bioweapons sales. But instead she’d found herself looking down a job offer and potential last minute Hail Mary save for her humanity. Or at least the appearance of it.

After all, normally when someone cuts up your face that much, you’d scar. Or spend weeks in a hospital.

But only three days later she was back at her apartment, under supervision of course, and nothing either looked or felt out of place. It had healed spookily fast. Though it felt tender and odd and sometimes stung in a way that told her some part of her body, some part of what was now her wasn’t happy having things go back instead of forward.

Fuck that part.

She’d hold on to having five fingers and toes for as long as she had them, which looked like it might be indefinitely for now. As long as she did what the DSO asked anyhow. Which was to start with names and places of every saler she’d heard of, every buyer she’d meet, and most important of all any competition she’d encountered when she’d gone freelance after Tricell collapsed.

So she sat down, the chair groaning beneath her as she scooted back and once more noticed that her legs were just a bit longer than they had been. She felt taller in general, though it had stopped. There was no real way to fix that, least none that wouldn’t possibly cripple her even with the unnatural regeneration she’d been showing.

“Back to the grind,” Jessica said as she started finishing up the next report on everything she knew about left overs of Tricell in Central Europe.

------

The case of J. Sherawat is particularly interesting. By Director’s orders I used an experimental inhibitor and retroviral agent to stop the T-Abyss activity and strengthen the remaining human DNA in her system. Surgical solutions drove back some of the mutation while the already accelerated healing factor allowed for a quick and smooth recovery. At this moment J. Sherawat appears superficially cured.

The truth could not be further from the case. The T-Abyss has achieved 100% viral saturation in her body, held in check from active transformation by the inhibitor preventing anomalous cell growth. In addition, while the other subjects that J. Valentine treated showed a relatively simple subset of genetic sources for their mutation the same can not be said for J. Sherawat. The family Sphyrnidae was identified as dominant, but traces of Astroscopus Guttatus, Eurypharynx Pelecanoides and even traces Porichthys Notatus among a small selection of others. I can only speculate what a stable mix of such a wide selection would produce but I once again must say that my scientific curiosity makes me wish to remove her access to the inhibitors or replace them with placebos so as to observe the effects.

One would think such an amalgamation would lead to rampant and disastrous growth, but I have my own hypothesis that part of why so many of the SBOWs we are generating include non-human genetic material (the process by which Progenitor Viruses are able to access such seemingly ex-nihilo remains unknown even as we control the selection in some cases). The additional time to adapt and change a human into mutation exhibiting non-human biological features slows down the virus much as the inhibitors do and thus drastically increases the time for full mutation and subsequently reduces the stress on the host. Decreasing the chance of transformation induced psychosis, temporary or not, and any other neurological damage which has become the hallmark of more normative ‘primate’ focused versions of the T-Virus and its derivatives.

Regardless, if perhaps for personal reasons, the Director has requested that J. Sherawat remain an at least human looking agent while we work to eliminate or monitor competing forces in the arena of bioweapons research.

Time will tell if she, or we, get to decide when that contract is… altered.

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Nolivar on Chapter 1 Tue 06 Sep 2022 03:30AM UTC

ooooooh very nice
I will say again I REALLY enjoy and have so much delight in having SBOW girl fics like this. the fact there are so many RE titles and not one where the main protag doesn't get mutated into a hot monster was such a miss. Manuela and Piers were close but Manuela pretty much is never seen again and Piers gets killed before his transformation was complete.
I do look forward how your going for this story with Jill as an SBOW as unlike Ashley who started out as a noncombatant but then got her call of adventure and than becoming a politician. Jill is a full on soldier and now has new powers and abilities to go with those. Will she be given more firepower to compliment her abilities or she more hack and slash as an SBOW with her new body and skills.
amazing as always and please keep me updated whenever you do more like this!

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Nolivar on Chapter 2 Wed 07 Sep 2022 08:53PM UTC

got some more scientific bodyhorror of what exactly jill looks like and how she functions.
I do like how shes not exactly BIG like a tyrant and still pretty normalish size with only being as tall as chris with her new form. shows she is still able to do reconnaissance and even get through areas and do missions without being seen or getting caught as well as having speed and mobility of a shark.
I do wonder if the BSAA were able to make a battle suit off her new form as well as what diet she is able to eat now and what she needs to digest?
As given this SBOW form is much different from ashley's in which I think Jill is more suited to battle and form more ready for ripping and tearing.

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Nolivar on Chapter 3 Sun 11 Sep 2022 07:58PM UTC

well shit
looks like jill got framed for the attack and is now going to get treated as a BOW target now.....gonna be a lot more deadly with her dealing with not just the bio terrorists but now the BSAA as well.
I am curious on if the lack of weapon modification for her use is due to them not being prepared to equip her so they pretty much just give her temporary gear and armor so they can prepare for better-suited stuff for her to use and use guns that can fit her or if its lack of care of the BSAA just giving her crappy equipment on purpose.
given RE8 the BSAA does look like they have fallen to corruption so likely they were pretty shady as before.
to which the wet suit is more or less to keep modesty for her given she still has female human biology on that.
Honesty there are no monster fuckers in the BSAA? think that would be easier for Jill to deal with then with people have ichy trigger fingers around her.....then again she would have to deal with constant flirts and people getting horny and flirty too so that would probably annoy her more.
The fact Wesker would be the type to eat all that healthy obnoxious shit and brag about "the temple is a body" really fits his ego and even some insights of his life in always being the "best" and "healthy".
The spear scene was really gut wrenching and god sometimes BOW biology does come in handy with life threatening wounds, Sherry proved that with her own healing factor. Do wonder how we will see Jill in her new natural environment and if there are any more zombie fish she will have to deal with.

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Anzer_ke on Chapter 3 Fri 30 Sep 2022 07:18AM UTC

“That it would be better if everyone dies then risk someone ending up like me.”
Oof, now that line hits like a truck. Love it.

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 3 Fri 30 Sep 2022 11:18AM UTC
  
  One regret I have is not finding more time to sidetrack in 'What is Ashley doing now' because 'bug girl activists takes on the world' has a lot of cool stuff and would be fun to take a deep dive into later.
  Glad you're liking it!
  
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Nolivar on Chapter 4 Tue 13 Sep 2022 05:58AM UTC

oooooooh looks likee Jill found some allies for her new misadventure
and it looks like she woke up Svenn's monster fucker feelings. At least someone can appreciate the sexy shark lady.
Also really like how we see Jill starting to use a new weapon that has new skills and damage. Do love in RE we get weird weapons like this that come in use for BOW attacks. Hopefully she will find a merchant along the way that will offer some new weapons for her.
does seem like whoever is behind this is already isolating her to make sure she doesn't bring anyone else here and it seems shes either in a new BOW experiment or shes in somewhere shes not supposed to be and they want to get rid of her and any potential witness's as soon as possible.

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Nolivar on Chapter 5 Thu 15 Sep 2022 04:48AM UTC

oh I wouldnt be too sure about that Jill
las plagas was able to survive being fossils, there could be anything in the tunnels still alive down there.
I am curious if Jill is adept in using her new BOW skills to use. given her new shark features she would at least be able to rip people apart or at least take a huge bite out of them.

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Nolivar on Chapter 6 Sun 18 Sep 2022 08:10PM UTC

goddamm. this really gave me some "the superdeep" movie with it being underground tunnel and having red growths that infected human bodies and fused them all together and stuff.
Really shows that despite Jill being a sexy shark girl there are still scarier things around.

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 6 Sun 18 Sep 2022 08:16PM UTC
  
  Glad you got the Superdeep reference.
  It's a big inspiration for the ideas for this one.
  
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Nolivar on Chapter 7 Sun 18 Sep 2022 09:00PM UTC

OH SHIT
looks like we got ourselves an enemy SBOW bug guy. seems like that would explain why they are all covered up in hiding their appearance and abilities.
but now lets see who will win on either bug man or shark girl.

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TheTentacleCommander on Chapter 7 Sun 20 Nov 2022 01:57AM UTC

Usually, I binge through stuff and then comment, but I couldn't wait. I love this what-if series not only because of the fun one can have with mutations (like none of the protags reacted adversely to any of these strains, really Cap?) but how each one reacts to their new bodies. I like how, unlike Ashley, who struggled to accept herself and, after doing so, put her energy into making the lives of SBOW like her better and finding a cure, Jill, with all that trauma from Wesker (and maybe survivor's guilt) seems to accept this all as a punishment and 'this is how it is' military praticality. But as seen in this chapter and before, there are these hints of genuine amazement like 'Woah I can sense this?' and it is way quicker to adapt to what she's working with. I mean Jill yanking out that pole was boss. Her flopping around in the snow like a snow shark was just aweeeeee. Shark Woman Jill Valentine is just such a fun concept.
Also, RE-style gore, especially the tunnel/tomb, was A+. I always enjoy me sum dirty unsettling gore in Resi fics and loved the questions of what was in that place, especially since it was closed off way before the Racoon Incident. And her missing partner, hmmm...I just love mysteries, okay, and so many are afoot
I also love the bits at the end with the lore building with new snippets linking Ashley's activism and even the weapon bits reading like a file in-game especially this chapter's where it hints at weapon advancements in tech in a world that has to adapt to now not only escalating bioterrorism (to the point of it being the preferred trade weapons of war) but with BOWs that can adapt like a human. Jill's remarks that she can figure out BOWs, it's the evil in humans she can't just foreshadow the 'fun' she's going to have - key example, this Bug Guy asshole. If things are going where I think they are, well, no one said all SBOW would be helpless victims of fate wanting peace *giggles at the possibilities already raised* And I'm now back to binge-reading this cool story!

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 7 Sun 20 Nov 2022 02:35AM UTC
  
  Really glad you enjoyed this!
  I saw your comment on my last one about Ashley and it really made my day. As for this, I think you are seeing where things are going and will likely enjoy how it ties together to prologue as a whole and some old RE lore/background stuff about how Umbrella portrayed themselves before it all went down.
  I've been loving writing these as well and really do need to get back on the next novella to finish it up, especially since I finally got some holiday time off this week to work on it.
  Also, I took a look at your own writing and I really do need to do more with how 'intelligent' the Tyrant lines could actually be. Especially since reading on Nemesis and Nemesis-Alpha was part of what inspired some ideas for the next series of mutations I wanted to play around with.
  (That and wanting to do 'X-Files inspired horror' in a way)
  Thanks again for the comment and I really enjoyed reading it.
  
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2. 1. TheTentacleCommander on Chapter 7 Sun 20 Nov 2022 07:44PM UTC
    
    I'm glad my (probably overly wordy) comment made ya day! I love reading fics that take the lore in interesting (and admittedly monsterfuckery) directions and that don't just stop at 'mon go burr' yanno? I want to know *why* the mon goes burr! I can see how stuff carries over from the first fic making this au fleshed out, and I can tell how much you enjoyed writing these as the care and interesting takes is all there!
    And woah, you read my gratuitous nonsense; I'm honored! Honestly, I've been begging for years for other writers to flesh out/play with Nem's lore and, in general, the 'intelligence' there, but alas, the fandom sleeps on that thread. There is much to play with in speculating on the whole Tyrant product line. Super interested to see where you take your ideas about that further in the series (I mean, you already had me at X-Files horror anyway).
    Thanks again for penning these excellent what-if fics.
    
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  2. 1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 7 Sun 20 Nov 2022 08:33PM UTC
      
      When I was listening to some RE lore podcasts while commuting and heard about how the Nemesis-A was based of the Plagas and 'technically' the brains of that Tyrant line I just had to pull that idea in for my next fic (in progress) since it fits so well to American UFO stories and alien horror-like stuff.
      Honestly, while I'm waffling between 'Rebecca Chambers science/case focused takes' or 'Bug girl thriller with Ashley' after that, part of me wants to come back and hit on it more since there's so much 'deep lore' ideas that could be hit on about the various origins of the progenitor viruses and various other mutagenic vectors which could play into that.
      And yeah, I'm way big into 'thinking' about the in depth biology and 'how' of these critters and people-turned critters. The SBOW concept lets me play at it from both angles and that's just even more fun. Especially when you commit to the (as you said, kind of monsterfuckery) angle that "No, you're not just going to die tragically as yourself or some cliched nonsense. You're still you... just with gills. Now what?"
      
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Nolivar on Chapter 8 Mon 19 Sep 2022 07:00PM UTC

that boss battle was really well done in showing how two SBOW's go at it with each other.
but the sexy shark lady won.
I do wonder if the rest of the boss's will be bug themed or if their different variations of being an SBOW. wonder if the female one will be and what sexy monster she would look like.
And it also seems that the main villain took advantage of Jill's compassion and hero duty by luring her to a trap to set her up against the BSAA. I take it he was the one who sent the call to get her framed on going on a rampage instead of them being the ones who trashed the team and set the outbreak.
This wont go well as it seems this will only cost Jill more time to stop whatever they have planned.

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Nolivar on Chapter 9 Wed 21 Sep 2022 05:17AM UTC

sexy shark Jill went full on solid snake non lethal take down this whole chapter.
Will say you did a good job playing into the horror genre of resident evil without even going into gore in having Jill take out the BSAA sent to take her down with non lethal takedowns. It does seem the BSAA team were going over the scenario of Jill losing her mind in going feral when she the opposite of her trying to get 100% in not killing anyone and making sure everyone gets out alive and getting the morality points from this events.
Honestly this chapter pretty much gives Simmons even more justification on SBOW soldiers with the fact Jill, being a large sexy shark lady, was able to sneak around and be able to take down the BSAA team quite easily with none of them being the wiser. in RE6 the ja'vo seemed close but they were more loud and while had training were still unstable and violent, RE7 baker family had thought capacity but were made insane, and RE8 we seh most of them being lycans but the lords still had brain capacity, and we see even then that BSAA have succeeded in creating BOW soldiers.
To which Jill's actions here will only further prove the success in SBOW soldiers. Though now I wonder if the BSAA will go with more shark themed soldiers this time....more sexy shark babes
speaking of sexy babes
looks like Ms Sherawat has entered the scene.....mmmmmmmmm.....please make her a sexy shark lady, especially with the same sexy outfit from revelations
ok horny aside
her appearance adds more to whats going on considering her appearance in revelation showed she worked for tricell, but since RE5 tricell fell apart so it is wonder who she is working for now or if she is more freelance this time. lets see what goes on from here with her showing up.
amazing stuff!

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Nolivar on Chapter 10 Sun 25 Sep 2022 09:46AM UTC

well damn
that was one brutal case. Also it seems Jessica may have chosen the wrong team this time as it looks like shes gonna get a rather severe makeover and gonna need to shop for more aquatic theme sexy outfits for her future I imagine.
I do wonder if we will see a Jill Jessica confrontation given this is the 1st time Jill has seen Jessica since the T-abyss incident all those years ago.
though rereading the chapter...think you may have left some details out. in how Jill went from getting shot in the leg to the villains almost getting torn apart somehow?

Last Edited Sun 25 Sep 2022 09:49AM UTC

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 10 Sun 25 Sep 2022 01:33PM UTC
  
  Whoops!
  I redid a version of this on Spacebattles and posted the old one first.
  It's been updated and corrected now.
  (Also the new updates show up there first before I do some quick edits and upload here)
  
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Nolivar on Chapter 11 Wed 28 Sep 2022 03:19AM UTC

huh
so it seems Jessica isn't a greedy merc and is more ada wong type in just working for the highest bidder with getting the virus's and BOW to competitors.....cant really consider evil considering Ada is like that too. So good to see she still got some standards on here and actually does consider Jill a friend to help her....or that the people shes with she considers TOO insane for her standards.
also we get some more info on the villains and do love how you show how really pathetic they really are with Grady just making shit up as he goes and full on just messing up at every plan and reynolds really being a desperate old man with too much money and doesn't want to die so he just throws money all over.
It also looks like there is no cure for sexy shark disease....guess Jill gonna get her own pack now.

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 11 Wed 28 Sep 2022 03:27AM UTC
  
  'Shiver'
  The proper term is a shiver.
  And yes, more sharks is more fun.
  Or fins.
  Fun fins.
  Anyway, yeah, I wanted to do 'greedy dicks' as the main villains for this one to contrast to more competent and ideologically driven villains. Or those with something 'technically' sympathetic perhaps. And you pegged them dead on.
  And I plan to drive home even more what a bunch of losers they are by the end.
  
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Nolivar on Chapter 12 Wed 28 Sep 2022 03:44AM UTC

Jill: well shit there goes the cure.....welp....time to make more shark people
abandon humanity, become shark.
Guess with her new antibodies, it may see that being shark is the best way to survive and adapt in a new body. So she can make a cure......but you become shark.....I see that as an absolute win
also hope Jessica keeps dressing sexy as now shark lady to add on to the flair. shes gonna make a lot more monster fuckers I'll tell you wait. air stewardess shark lady would be very sexy.
do like how you show the body horror of the transformation and how it does affect them really heavy and the slow transformation that comes with it. Looks like after this mission, the BSAA gonna have to start investing all that money grady has been laundering into actually making shark themed gear and clothes for the people that got infected from this. Put the money to better use and not let greedy guys use it to play god.
Also wonder if this is gonna be the new policy when fighting T-abyss virus from now on with everyone carrying the "jill Valentine sexy shark cure" in if someone gets infected they have to inject themselves with the shark cure and become sexy shark. eventually the BSAA gonna get their own shark division.
Simmons: its all coming together. soon I will have my SBOW army to fulfill my fetish....I mean....for the good of america.

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Nolivar on Chapter 13 Wed 28 Sep 2022 03:47AM UTC

mmmmmmmmmmm sexy shark girl
(I do wonder if shark anatomy is still compatible with humans for sex......just curious for reasons.....sexy shark sexy).
also Jessica shark girl in sexy resident evil revelations outfits as shark girl.

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TheTentacleCommander on Chapter 13 Sun 20 Nov 2022 07:16PM UTC

Love this design! I'm glad the mental image I had was pretty close; she resembles her humanoid shape but sleek and aquatic with that awesome protective hood, tail, and claws (and super agree with Nolivar shark girl is hooot, but am biased cause Jill is hot no matter the form to me)
also yall's killin' me with 'Gill Valentine' XD (Burly Dad Man Barry Burton is a dad joke menace)

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 13 Sun 20 Nov 2022 08:34PM UTC
  
  Glad you liked it!
  I so need to actually commission some more art of these later this year (hopefully).
  And yeah, 'Gill' Valentine is still working it IMHO too.
  
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Nolivar on Chapter 14 Thu 29 Sep 2022 01:09AM UTC

of course their turning into sexy sharks
its the ideal perfection they can imagine being.
Sexy shark jill is perfect so best they become shark.
Somewhere wesker is turning in his grave in seeing how Uroboros wasn't making super humans but jill be turning everyone into shark people.
its also something how las plagas is the more mass produced BOW type on the market, as it is the more ideal use in controlling people and getting cannon fodder to do your bidding. another nail in the coffin on los illuminados and saddler with their greatest weapon they wanted to be worshipped as a god being turned into a mass-produced product.
though I do wonder how long las plagas will last once the C-virus hits the market as we see that those infected due maintain some intellect as well function as SBOW's but the backdraw is that they do suffer more random mutations and heightened aggression. I do wonder if Simmons and Carla will see these missions of SBOWs as potential data to use to refine the C-virus to make it more manageable for their future army of SBOW's.

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AcaciaEocene on Chapter 15 Fri 30 Sep 2022 04:29AM UTC

She just had to jinx it, didn't she?
There was already a pretty good chance he was going to end up a giant Draug monster, but that comment ensured it.

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 15 Fri 30 Sep 2022 11:19AM UTC
  
  I suppose we'll see...
  Grady's plans have had a tendency to collapse under their own weight of thrown together improvisation. (Hopefully tonight if I can finish up the last one)
  
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Nolivar on Chapter 15 Fri 30 Sep 2022 06:29AM UTC

RE really is the best universe in the fact it avoids the zombie apocalypse trope in favor of showing how fucking ridiculous/pathetic/terrifying rich people can be when they want to play god and how much they fund creating monsters with multiple eyes to feel superior.
only to die in the most guttiest and fun way possible.
Jill be getting better in her sexy shark instincts, though soon shes gonna have to go full shark for this final battle with grady

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 15 Fri 30 Sep 2022 11:20AM UTC
  
  Like I said, *Jaws Theme Intensifies* is the plan for these last few chapters.
  
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Anzer_ke on Chapter 15 Sat 01 Oct 2022 06:15AM UTC

I cannot tell you how much I love your choices qith this particular miniboss. From his taunting over the radio to the inevitable end result of Mr I'm-Better-Than-A-Guuuurrrl going hand to hand with someone with far more relevant experience than him. This one was pitch perfect.
Though Burton will be disappointed in her not taking the opportunity for a pun.

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1. Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 15 Sat 01 Oct 2022 12:25PM UTC
  
  Glad you enjoyed it.
  I was worried my action scenes in this weren't up to snuff since I'm not used to writing them a lot.
  But I do enjoy making villains like this, since it's fun to have hateable bad guys.
  
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Sink or Swim

Kronecker_Delta

Summary:

Chapter 1: Prologue

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Chapter 2: Chapter 1

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Chapter 3: Chapter 2

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Chapter 4: Chapter 3

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Chapter 5: Chapter 4

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Chapter 6: Chapter 5

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Chapter 7: Chapter 6

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Chapter 8: Chapter 7

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Chapter 9: Chapter 8

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Chapter 10: Chapter 9

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Chapter 11: Chapter 10

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Chapter 12: Chapter 11

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Chapter 13: Fanart Intermission

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Chapter 14: Chapter 12

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Chapter 15: Chapter 13

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Chapter 16: Chapter 14

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Chapter 17: Epilogue

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Nolivar on Chapter 1 Tue 06 Sep 2022 03:30AM UTC

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Nolivar on Chapter 2 Wed 07 Sep 2022 08:53PM UTC

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Nolivar on Chapter 3 Sun 11 Sep 2022 07:58PM UTC

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Anzer_ke on Chapter 3 Fri 30 Sep 2022 07:18AM UTC

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Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 3 Fri 30 Sep 2022 11:18AM UTC

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Nolivar on Chapter 4 Tue 13 Sep 2022 05:58AM UTC

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Nolivar on Chapter 5 Thu 15 Sep 2022 04:48AM UTC

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Nolivar on Chapter 6 Sun 18 Sep 2022 08:10PM UTC

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Kronecker_Delta on Chapter 6 Sun 18 Sep 2022 08:16PM UTC

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Nolivar on Chapter 7 Sun 18 Sep 2022 09:00PM UTC

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