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weskerian — SxW Contest Entry 16/17 The Rooms Chapter 3
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Published: 2017-01-08 21:55:27 +0000 UTC; Views: 2081; Favourites: 2; Downloads: 0
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Chapter 3It was like being stuck in a spider’s web. For the first few minutes after the pain dragged her up from below, all she could do was lie, blood adhering her to the bed.
Gave her time to inspect her new lodgings. She didn’t know at what point she’d passed out when he’d been carving into her back, but the darkness she’d fallen into hadn’t been an escape. Instead, it had felt like being plunged into deep water, where her lungs burned and unbearable pressure compressed her spine.
She tried to focus on something - anything to blot out the pain - but the dripping tap was a sledgehammer to her skull, the sheets were sandpaper, the cracks in the walls spread down her back and crippled her.
After a few minutes, it stopped being part of the torture and started being a cell. A bare concrete basement room with a cracked sink and leaking faucet, a broken mirror buttered over with fingerprints, the owners of the hands long gone. And the battered cot she was lying on. The sheets were clean. Or had been, at least.
She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. It took her a few moments to pull herself into a sitting position from there. Her brain sloshed in her skull. She sat and waited for the dizziness to pass, the sheet hanging from her, soaked through red and clinging to her wounds.
She stood up, blowing out a breath as she did. Her knees were water, barely able to take her weight. Once she’d made her feet, she staggered away from the bed. The bloody sheet trailed out from behind her like the cape of the shittiest superhero, or the world’s most depressing wedding train. It dragged across the concrete as she walked, weighing down her steps.
She rattled the door. It didn’t budge. About what she expected. Felt like there hadn’t been a single unlocked door since she’d woken up in this dump.
After that, she had to take a moment, lean against the wall and focus, push down the pain. So much for the magic Umbrella medicine he’d fapped so hard about. Felt like she was still fucked.
She panted, trying to pull in the oxygen her body was craving. Short, sharp breaths, nothing too taxing. Then she decided to risk it and take a big, deep breath.
For once, it didn’t feel like trying to breathe into a lungful of knives. Had he actually done something right?
It still hurt. A lot. But it felt more like wearing a corset, or getting hugged a wee bit tighter than was comfortable by a snake. Didn’t feel like she was all broken up around the chest like before.
The lock opened. She rounded, forcing her body into readiness, gearing herself to spring at him.
He was already into the cell before she could throw herself at him. His hand latched around her throat and flung her backwards into the wall. She managed to keep her feet, but knocked her head against the stone. He threw the door shut behind him with a bang.
“You are supposed to be resting, my dear,” he informed her, “I see that I have erred in my decision not to place you in restraints.”
“Aye, but it’s not the biggest of your fucking problems.”
He sized her up behind his glasses. If she’d been floating in water, he’d have been circling her. She grinned back at him, a little reminder that she had teeth of her own.
“I trust your condition is much improved. You appear to still be feeling yourself.”
“I’m doing fucking great,” she said, “actually, you can probably let me go now. I can make my own way back to town.”
“I must confess I would be interested to see how you fare. But your recovery is not yet complete. Perhaps another time.”
“Alright. Fucking pencil it in then.”
The sheet dropped off her back with a wet peeling noise and flapped to the ground. He stepped towards her, trying to menace her into the corner. She stepped forward instead. Fuck him.
“If I’m supposed to be resting, what the fuck do you want?”
“Merely to assess your recovery.”
“Just that, huh?” She leered, spreading her lips wide and narrowing her eyes. “Sure you didn’t come in here for something else?”
Like they didn’t both already know. He’d turned her into her hobby. He probably didn’t have anything fucking better to do than to show up and bat her around like a big, black cat. Which she supposed made her the mouse, only there’d probably never been a mouse with teeth that big.
One of his eyebrows rose over the rim of his sunglasses. “Did you have something in mind yourself, my dear?”
“Only that we should get it fucking over with.”
His body movement was fluid. He rushed towards her in a torrent of violence, like a dam had burst that had been holding him back. Unlikely to be her permission that he’d been waiting for.
She was probably moving like porridge right about now. Kind of a shame she couldn’t just dribble through his fingers. Or splat all over his nice, clean suit.
He drove her backwards into the wall. Her back pinched tight, like a dozen hands pulling rolls of skin out of her. She remembered the torch he’d had, burning shut the wound on her leg. He’d done the same with her back. She probably looked like well-done steak.
His hand was on her throat, choking. She jammed the heel of her palm into his face, but he caught it, twisted it away. Her knees buckled under the weight of his pressure, but she forced them straight. No way he was pushing her down.
He heaved her to the side instead. She yawed, feet wobbling, and collapsed onto the bed. Before she could stand, he was forcing her back down with one hand, crushing her face into the mattress. She kicked back at him, but he moved his body in close to her, tangling their legs.
His hand circled around her neck, sliding over her mouth and nose. She tried to bite, but he was keeping his soft bits away from her teeth with studied poise. He’d been getting way too much practice of late. A couple of seconds later, and she started flailing as the air ran out.
One finger peeled away from her nose. She sucked in air again, nostrils flaring, as he leaned down to get close to her ear.
“You haven’t had the opportunity to admire my handiwork, Shakahnna.”
She struggled, trying to buck him off. He held something into her line of vision. The light glinted off the blade of a knife. The same one she’d lost to him on the balcony, it looked like.
Once upon a time, a little bit of weight and leverage and she’d have sent him flying. Now, every time she tried to fight back, her body protested and couldn’t muster the strength to move him. So had he been hiding how good he was? Or was she still so bust she had nothing left in the tank?
The knife bit into her back, undoing all the fannying about he’d done burning it shut in the first place. She screamed into his hand and redoubled her efforts to knock him off.
The cut felt like it extended from the back of her neck down to her arse, a big, gaping wound in her reverse. Fresh blood was already starting to pour down her flanks.
The hand around her mouth pulled her upright, onto her knees. He brushed her hair out of her face with his free hand. She knelt, breathing hard through her nose, her back pressed flush to his front. She could feel the material of his suit wicking blood from her back.
He trailed his fingers through the valley of cleaved flesh, wetting the tips in her blood. More heavy breathing, more muffled screams from her mouth, unbidden. He pulled her head back, exposing her throat. Holding her close, tight, watching the breath rise and fall in her windpipe.
He bit her again, his teeth falling into the grooves he’d already gnawed into her neck before. In a second, she was bleeding. The warmth spread out from the wound not just the blood, but her pulse quickening. Hot under the collar, in every way. She lingered in the pain longer than she should. Bad for her. Time to put him down.
She grabbed his wrist and wrenched his hand away from her mouth. She sprawled forward onto the bed, which gave her enough space to kick him away. She rolled, keeping her back off the sheets, putting herself in the corner. Her arm and leg came up in a shield to ward him off.
He observed her from a distance, predatory. He seemed to be weighing up attacking her again and leaving her to heal.
“I will return when you are feeling more ... accommodating,” he told her, wiping away the blood from his mouth. Her blood. He seemed to be savouring it.
“So long as you fuck off.”
He smiled at her. It was deeply threatening. “For now. I advise you rest for when I return.”
She watched him leave. The thought flashed through her head to run for the door, but he filled up the exit. She let him go.
Once he was gone, she staggered up. The wound in her back throbbed. She limped over to the mirror. His handiwork. Fuck was he babbling about?
She turned her back. Her reflection did the same. With a bloody hand, she pulled back the flesh around the cut. It was only a few inches long. Felt like a bloody ravine in her body.
She peeled the meat away until she glimpsed a shimmer of ivory, wet and red, beneath the surface. The cold air touching the raw flesh was like an icy finger probing. She looked into the hole and saw the dark grooves in the bone, carved into her rib.
A.W. That was what they said. His fucking initials.
“Fucking cunt,” she growled. The mirror shattered under her fist and tumbled into the sink.
=x=x=x=
A fragment of a dream or a memory. She woke up wrapped in plastic. Upright, not standing. Feet suspended above the floor, dancing on a membrane that twisted and snared around her feet. Her fingers squeaked against the bag, nails clawing ineffectually. She crushed her mouth to the clear sheet, sucking for air vainly. The bag constricted around her with each wasted breath, deflating like her lungs.
The man in the bag in front of her was already still. So was the woman behind her. Their gaping mouths told her they were waiting for somebody to come take their organs.
They told her someone was coming to take something else from her.
She sat up. The plastic turned to a cotton sheet and fell off her. She sat on the bed and looked around, bleary-eyed, disoriented.
This was different. Not a room in the mansion or the laboratory she’d glimpsed in waking nightmares. Everything was wood, from the walls to the floor to the furniture. The place felt lived in, from the scuffs on the corners of the dresser to the socks stuffed in the drawer. A stack of dirtied paperbacks sat on the bedside table beside a lamp, a clock-radio with no dial and a glass rimed with the powdery residue of evaporated water.
Another lamp was resting on the dresser, with a Stetson crowning the shade. Way too fun to be anything to do with Wesker.
“Good morning, my dear.”
She swung around, leaping half out of the bed and dragging the sheet off with her. She set her feet on the floor and kept her hands up, warding him away.
He hadn’t moved. He’d positioned himself in her blind spot as she’d woken up, where she wouldn’t see him standing, creeping. The shadows in the little corridor where he was standing didn’t help. She must have looked right at him and just looked away.
She wondered how many other times he’d been lurking in the darkness, just out of view.
“Fuck are we?” she asked.
“The workers’ quarters. Guards and non-laboratory staff are housed here.”
“Done with the cell then?”
“For now,” she said, without a hint of humour, “we shall see what circumstances require.”
She rolled her eyes. He liked to pretend that what he did was a direct reaction to something she did. Not surprising. He’d always liked to pretend.
“So what are we doing here?”
“If you will follow me then I will show you.”
For a moment, neither of them moved. She half-expected him to come and get her. She tensed, lowered her weight, leering at him, egging him on. So she was “healed”. That probably meant he wouldn’t think twice before getting handy with her.
But she’d have never thought twice.
He was the one who wanted her patched up. She could take or leave it.
Maybe he sensed she was ready for a fight. It always seemed like he was aware of when she really wanted to get stuck in about him. He fucked off before it could degenerate, leaving her half-cocked.
She’d have to be careful. It was usually when she expected him to be ditching her and her desire for a rammy that he’d spring something on her. In the doorway of the room, or just outside, when he passed out of view. He was a tricky fuck.
She rounded the bed as he strode away from her and down the darkened corridor. She followed, keeping her feet planted and her fists balled tight, ready to smash his face in. He was a silhouette ahead, a shadow framed in the light shining through the doorway. Beyond, she could see nothing but more wood, and his broad frame filling up her exit.
He vanished from the opening, disappearing around the corner. She reached the door, wary of him lurking. He was waiting for her just outside, arms folded behind his back. Pretending again.
The room outside was some kind of display room. At its centre, a mass of complex machinery, tubing and glass all fastened with brass, stood on a table ringed by a velvet rope, like a museum piece. It had been polished up all nice and tagged in about a dozen different places with labels. These cunts fapping over their ugly science, over their progress.
Every single one of them was just like him. Wrong in the head.
One of the walls was given over to glass specimen cases. She could see three or four shapes squirming around inside each of them. So what the fuck were those? Pets? Creepy pets for a bunch of creepy fucks?
“Fuck is this place?”
“A breeding room,” he explained, as she stepped towards the cases and peered through the glass.
Green snakes coiled around one another in the muggy heat behind the wall of the box. Perspiration clung to the other side. In other, smaller boxes, single spiders the size of her fist lumbered slowly over hunks of mouldering wood or hid themselves in burrows of earth.
“Breeding? What, because you want more?”
“They are test subjects, Shakahnna. For use in our laboratories. We are still studying the effects of the Tyrant virus on all species. This is where we culture our less security sensitive subjects.”
“So what are the effects of the Tyrant virus? Since I know you’re fucking desperate to tell me. Think you’re gonna give me nightmares?”
“In the case of arachnids and certain reptiles, such as these, we have observed a profound increase in size, as well as in aggression and potency of venom. As of yet, we have not discovered the upper limit of these increases.”
She tapped the glass. The spider on the other side ignored her. “So you mean they get really big? Really, really big?” She laughed. “Is that all your thing does?”
Obviously, that was enough. Just looking at the creatures in the containers was convincing her they didn’t need to be any larger. Coming face-to-face with one of those spiders as big as her would be akin to the kind of stuff she usually only saw when she was asleep.
“In mammalian test subjects, the virus causes the same increase in aggression, but a dramatic decrease in higher brain functions.”
“What you mean there is that it makes them angry and stupid. So just like you then.”
He shook his head. Maybe he thought they were above such insults. Apparently keeping her prisoner so far hadn’t given him any deeper insight into what kind of person she was.
She noticed he hadn’t mentioned which mammals they’d been experimenting on.
“Hey, look,” she said, pointing at the only interesting display case in the wall, “this one’s empty.”
She wondered if he understood the subtext. She figured he didn’t, else he’d have probably tried to stop her before she punched clean through the glass. So either he hadn’t understood shit, or he was more than happy to just let her bash on. Literally.
The glass sliced up her knuckles, which she’d been expecting. Felt good. A little normality, a little reality, after the nightmare in the basement. She could still feel the scars on her back, the limiting tightness of the burns that felt like anchors chained to her shoulders, restraining her. A cut from broken glass was just what she was needing.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her away, too late to stop her grabbing the biggest shard she could lay her hand on and swinging it at him.
He released her pretty fucking quick as she slashed the air where his throat had been. She spattered his jacket with her blood with the wave of her hand. Then she slashed back, lunging forward to close the distance he’d created.
He blocked, trapping her wrist with one hand, and driving his fist into her elbow, shaking the shard out of her grip. It clattered to the floor and tumbled away, drawing a red line along the boards behind it.
He swung her around, slamming her front into the wall beside the specimens. It shook a laugh out of her. Before it would have felt like she was a packet of broken biscuits being smacked off the wall. Now she was feeling a little more like herself. The blow felt solid. It shook her, but didn’t shake her apart.
She took a swing at his head, twisting back around. He let her go so that she could spin all the way round, then forced her against the wall again, his fingers encircling her wrists.
She leered up at him, ready for whatever he was planning to do.
He pulled her arm towards him, using his thumb to gouge into the wound on her palm left by the glass to splay her hand open. The moment he was close enough, he trailed his tongue up the heel of her hand and up to the base of her fingers. It was rough against the raw flesh beneath her skin. The saliva made the wound ache as it cooled.
Before, she’d have had a bit of a groan about it, egg him on. Now, she was reining back on the reaction, fighting not to show even the faintest flicker of desire, no matter how much the pain and sadism whispered straight to her loins.
It was more difficult than she thought it would have been. She always thought she played up to it, a little bit of theatrics to keep him interested. Turned out she’d actually just been really into it.
Not that she was going to let him know that. She’d let him think it was all a big joke at his expense, that her feelings for him and what he did had evaporated.
She shook her hand loose and slapped him. The contact was good. It felt sharp, sounded loud.
It was the spur that made him spring into action. His hand encircled her throat and he slammed the back of her head against the wall. She giggled.
He glared at her between the crimson stain of her fingers. She’d tore the shades right off his ugly pus and added a little colour to his pasty mug. He didn’t look very happy about it.
She grinned. “What else is interesting around here?”
His lips curled up into an ugly smile, but the look in his eyes never changed. “Shall we see?”
=x=x=x=
Maybe she’d gotten a hair too close with her shard. Maybe the cuts on her hand reminded him of how messed up she’d gotten before, and how much effort he’d had to put in to keep her ticking over. This time, he was taking precautions.
The bag on her head was scratchy and smelled like damp. The cord wrapped around her wrists and ankles turned her hands and feet numb, like they were immersed in ice water. The chair under her was metal, all set at diagonals, just a generic fold-out by the feel of it.
She tried to work up slack in the cord. She tried to get her teeth into the material of the bag. Both felt like they were going to be a lot of work.
Beyond her hood, she could hear machines whirring, beeping, pumping. Another lab. Was this the official tour then?
The bag went tight. A rough hand pulled it out of the reach of her teeth, and then it was gone. Her hair flopped down around her head. She whipped it back out of her face.
Everything was water. She could see nothing but a wide, impenetrable underwater murk ahead of her, churning with particulate. Air bubbles crawled across the glass between her and the immense tank, streaking upwards in jerky fits. She saw metal braces forming windows, framing panes, restraining the pressure behind that glass.
Wesker’s hand prickled the back of her neck, like the bubbles streaking upwards. She shuddered like he’d just submerged her in the freezing water.
“What’s this? The baby-drowning tank?”
Since she was pretty sure Umbrella’s stooges must have been killing babies night and day in every manner conceivable for reasons. Made as much sense as everything else they did.
“You have quite the imagination, Shakahnna,” he chided, as he cut away the cord binding her wrists, but left her tethered to the chair by her ankles, “this is merely an aquarium. Terrestrial species are not the only ones that we have an interest in.”
“Aye, so you can have a mutant Flipper to go with mutant Lassie and mutant Skippy.”
She wondered if he watched television. Probably too common a past time for him. He preferred to spend his time on such high class pursuits as murdering poor people and kicking puppies. And torturing his girlfriend.
Ex-girlfriend.
Her face was reflected in the glass, swollen and blue like she was waterlogged. She got a vague impression of his features behind her, just the ghost of a scowl. If she hadn’t been able to feel him there, she might have missed him.
Something streaked through the water, blurring her face as it rippled the murk in its wake. A sleek, silver body with a powerful tail and a maw full of teeth. She saw the tell-tale sharp fin. It was as big as Wesker was. Probably less of a cunt though.
“Oh right,” she said, as she watched the shape circling in the tank, “it’s that kind of place then. Okay, I’ll have that one.”
She nodded her head at a second silver shape as it flickered through the water. Now all they had to do was watch it, pan fry it and serve it to her on a platter. Since that was obviously what he’d brought her down here for.
He didn’t answer her request though. He simply hovered next to her, just out of sight. His breath stirred her hair. It tickled her behind the ear. It was all way too familiar. She tried to shrug him off, but she didn’t have the strength.
Nodding had been a chore in and amongst itself. But it wasn’t the pain and internal wrongness of injury, like she’d felt when he’d first brought her there. This was something new. Muscle fatigue. Joint pain. Like she just didn’t have enough gas.
He’d fixed her, sure, but he’d obviously done something else to her too. It was like he’d installed a valve, something he could use to turn her fight up and down when it suited him.
She could feel a sore in her neck, an open wound touching the air. It was small and round, a burning fingerprint, a touch of pain.
A needle mark, it felt like. Not that she had much experience to draw on. She fucking hated needles. But he was exactly the kind of cunt who liked to use them. On other people, obviously.
And it wasn’t like he could take her in a real fight. They both already knew that.
“They are exceptional creatures, wouldn’t you agree?”
Shak grunted. Maybe this wasn’t dinner after all. Maybe he’d just brought her here to give her yet another lecture. Since apparently he liked that more than anything else in the world.
“Most shark species are apex predators. They are perfectly adapted to their environment. Their unparalleled ability to survive is married to an insatiable hunger that serves them well in harsh and unforgiving climates.”
She stared at the sharks as they shimmered through the water. They must have been looking at two different animals. They just looked like big fish to her. Big, toothy fish.
“This mouth are lined with multiple rows of teeth, and the power of their jaws is quite sufficient to crush human bones. In their underwater habitat, a human would stand little chance against them, not least because a shark can detect a wounded animal at a considerable distance, and close that distance in seconds.”
His hand trailed around her neck, brushing her earlobe, her jaw, making her shudder. He took her shoulder and pulled her back into her seat. The knife he’d stolen from her came into view, hovering before her eyes, tracing the line of her features.
“It is to our detriment that the human race as not such natural abilities. Even extensive training can do so much to improve our capacity to survive. It is our superior intellect that provides us with our edge. It allows us to compensate for our lack of natural weaponry.”
He touched the flat of the blade to her jaw and pressed her head to turn towards him. She resisted. The same old games they played. When she thought about it, the way he’d always enjoyed menacing her with knives should have set off alarm bells. Difficult to hear them over the sound of throbbing loins she supposed.
He tilted her blade, cutting into her cheek, forcing her head to move. Blood trickled, running in thick rivulets down to his fingers. He succeeded in meeting her gaze at the corner of her eyes.
“You ain’t a fucking shark,” she told him, through clenched teeth.
“I never claimed to be.”
Something swallowed up the space behind the glass. She looked away from him and realised what it was. Her eyes bulged.
It was another shark. But not like the others. A monster, ten times the size of the others. Its teeth were a grotesque protrusion from under its snout, like a jumble of misshapen knives. Its eyes were swollen, bloody orbs that swivelled madly, seeking meat. She was sure they were fixed on her. Its gills left puffs of gore in the water, little toxic red clouds. With a shudder of movement, it shot away with a flick of its tail, so powerful it rattled the glass.
She was so surprised, she didn’t notice how deep the knife was cutting her. She’d turned her head into it without even noticing. And she only became aware of Wesker when he grabbed her around the neck and twisted her around, seat and all.
His tongue lashed the wound, made her body tighten up sharp. If she felt any kind of pleasure from this, she didn’t think she’d ever forgive herself. Even when his teeth latched onto the broken skin, sawing into it, deepening, widening, drawing more blood.
It was an effort of will to get up the strength to push him off. His mouth came away from her, dripping blood. He kept a tight hold of her arm. With a minimum of effort, he pulled her out of her seat and wrestled her against the glass, her feet dragging behind her, the chair like an anchor stopping her from walking.
She tried to fight him off, terror surging through her, heart rate spiking.
She hit the glass, couldn’t decide if the crack she heard was her or it. She tried to struggle away, but he held her flush, pinning her with his entire body. She felt like she was going to fall back, through the glass, into the water where that thing was floating.
Between the devil and the deep blue sea.
“That is the purpose of the Tyrant virus, my dear. To create a more potent predator.”
She scoffed. He didn’t even realise how dumb he sounded. Unfortunately, her condescension was undermined by the note of panic in her voice, and the powerful desire to be anywhere other than against that glass.
“Why?” she asked.
He peered down at her. His thumb touched the bloody hole in her cheek. Then, in a low, dangerous tone, he gave his answer.
“All weak things exist to be eaten.”
“What does that make me?” she asked, her own tone a threat, her eyes narrowed.
He smiled. It was not a nice smile. “That remains to be seen.”
=x=x=x=
Cold air prickled a rush of goosebumps up her arm to the wound below her shoulder. She groaned and rolled over on the concrete. The cuts on her limbs yawned wide as they woke up and screamed in protest. Her breath hitch, sharp in her chest.
She forced her eyes open, took in the low, dark clouds smothering out the pale glow of the moon. High, skeletal boughs of ancient trees reached skyward, clawing at the rolling murk overhead.
She was outside. How had she gotten outside?
There was blood all over her hands. It was dry, sticky between her fingers. She hated that. When she sat up, her body cried. Literally. Tears streamed down her face, her eyes filling up with water until she was blinded.
A red snail trail painted a squirming path across the stone behind her. Blood from the wounds on her shoulders and thighs, smeared all over the courtyard. There was a knife on the ground, abandoned amid the blood. The blade was crimson, probably from her. She reached out and grabbed it, tendons in her arms complaining.
It was the same knife from before, apparently destined to play gooseberry in her and Wesker’s last date on Earth.
It wasn’t just the blood. Her clothes were damp. The stones under her were dark with absorbed water. There were puddles among the flagstones closer to the stone archway that breathed mist from its pitch black throat in the middle of the wall. Stone flowerpots and carvings of predatory animals adorned the space around her. A bone dry fountain flowed with nothing but disappointment.
Shak tried to stand. She made it up to a crouch when her thigh muscles burned too hot and her knees buckled. Gravity deposited her roughly on her arse.
The eerie silence broke. A rattling noise echoed out of the depths of the tunnel across the courtyard. It tore through the faint sound of running water and whistling wind, and made Shak’s heart seize. A spasm of pain stole her breath as she tensed every muscle, including the ones with holes in them.
The noise wasn’t familiar, but the reaction was profound and immediate. Fear. Sudden, complete, instinctual threat response. She curled her limbs in tight, gripped the knife with white knuckles. Her teeth bared.
Her brain identified the noise. Not a rattle. A snarl. Low. Guttural. An animal, but not one she’d ever seen before.
The darkness deepened at the mouth of the tunnel. A shape filled the entrance. A hand emerged that was covered in scales, murky green blotched with black, and gripped the wall.
She saw the moonlight pick out two narrow, slitted eyes, a mouthful of razor teeth all glistening with saliva. Its claws were long knives at the ends of its fingers.
It let out a shriek that rang in Shak’s ears, strident and enraged. The tranquillity of the courtyard shattered as the monster burst out of the darkness and galloped straight towards her on all-fours.
Its hide was rough and thick like an alligator’s, its facial features stubby like a lizard’s. It moved upright like an ape, using powerful forelimbs and hind legs in rapid succession to propel itself at her.
It moved faster. Too fast for her to run, or even contemplate moving out of the way.
She shunted backwards into the fountain, moving so hastily she had no aim. Loose stones hit the ground, breaking apart. She grabbed a fragment, acting on half-formed ideas, and tossed it at the charging creature.
The hunk of masonry broke on its flat skull. It ignored the blow and leapt at her, howling with rage.
She slid backwards, under the rim of the fountain. The monster demolished the basin with a swipe of its powerful claws, showering her with dust and pebbles. It grunted in frustration and leaned down, eyes gleaming as they focused on her, claws cocked back to eviscerate her.
She lunged forward, driving her knife up under its jaw. The blade pierced its chin and pinned its mouth shut.
Before it could react, she rose up under it, rammed her shoulder into its gut and lifted it into the air.
It started to flail as she carried it, preventing her from doing much more than charge straight ahead. Its feet kicked, coming inches from disembowelling her. She ignored it, kept its body high and tight to her shoulder until...
She reached the low wall around the archway and pitched forward. The monster landed with its hunched spine bent over the jutting barrier. It let out a scream, limbs pedalling wildly. The talons on its toes cleaved into her forearms before she could back off.
She threw her full weight over the wall and landed feet first on its chin. Her bare feet skidded on scales as the top of its skull hammered into the concrete. She dropped on her arse on its jaw. Its spine crunched under her weight.
Its limbs spasmed violently. It rolled off the wall and flopped to the floor beside her, grunting and shaking. She crawled out of the puddle she’d landed in and tried to wring herself out. Landing had split her wounds open and now her clothes were soaked red.
She lay for a moment, panting, muscles burning. The few seconds of fighting had sapped her. Her strength had bled out of her through the holes in her limbs.
She rolled over as soon as she was able, groping from the knife she’d left sticking out of the monster’s face. It was gone.
A hand encircled her throat and held her to the floor as she flailed in surprise. Wesker loomed above her, cold and impassive features filling her vision. The knife was in his other hand, but he didn’t seem to want to use it, soiled as it now was.
“You appear to have misplaced this, my dear,” he observed. His finger gouged at the torn flesh at her shoulder.
“Fuck was that?” she asked, pointing at the toothy, scaly nightmare lying next to her.
“A diversion. Some light entertainment.”
She scowled up at him. She’d been calling the thing a monster because it was a giant, man-shaped lizard, but it wasn’t. Just because it didn’t look like any animal she’d seen before, didn’t make it not an animal.
The real monster was hovering over her, wearing a human face.
“You set that thing on me?”
“I was curious to know what you would make of it. Short work would appear to be the answer. Even with your ... injuries.”
She snarled. She supposed stabbing her was his new hobby. She just wished he’d do it when she was awake to enjoy it.
“Looks like your giant lizard needs a wee bit more work.”
He smirked. “Indeed. It would seem that there is room for improvement. But then, that is what we are here for.”
The pressure on her shoulder increased as he moved his hand gently off her neck. She bristled, as usual. It felt like he was inspecting his handiwork, seeing how he liked her with those particular wounds. He made her feel like clay he was working between his fingers.
“We are attempting to create a more effective predator.”
=x=x=x=
