Chapter Text
“What a fuckin’ sicko…” said Nadia, stepping over the corpse of young woman. “Bastard had ‘em all in here like this?!”
You swallowed hard and tried desperately not to look at the faces of the dozen women dead in the dark room. They were recently deceased yet all of them were seemingly attached to the floor by plant vines growing around and out of their flesh. Despite your mask re-circulating the original oxygen you’d arrived in with you could still smell the sweet scent of wet decay.
“C’mon, we can’t stay here.” Chris stated, his tall form at the front of your small group. If it weren’t for his height he would’ve looked like the rest of you dressed up in full body, black protection. “Remember, we’ve gotta get the survivors and get out.”
“Then we can blow this shitshow up, right?” D.C. grumbled from behind you. He was watching all of your backs and you could hear his nervousness.
“Correct.” Chris replied with a tone of amusement. He and Nadia continued to sweep the hallways in front of you.
All you could do was clutch your holopad and try to keep your breathing even as you followed them. You weren’t a soldier like them. No, you were with Blue Umbrella, fresh eyed and the only one willing to accompany them on such dangerous escapades. Someone needed to collect samples and evidence of the foul play at hand. At least with Chris and Nadia and D.C. you felt at least somewhat secure.
“So, Miss Y/N…” D.C. started quietly, his back gently nudging yours. The slight comfort was welcome. “Do you have any idea what all this shit is?”
“I...uhm…” You swallowed hard, noticing the familiar vines and the very occasional flower that sprouted from them. “Not entirely…”
Nadia let out a soft snort and peered back at you with a knowing expression. “It’s bad news you don’t wanna freak us out with. Ain’t that right?”
“That’s enough.” Chris snapped, cutting all of you off. “We can’t let our guards down. There’s something around here that wants us dead.”
As the four of you continued quietly along you made sure to take the occasional picture of the blooming flowers you noticed. Most of them resembled something akin to a gnarled sunflower, but orange in color, and with a fuzzy white pollen coating the disc florets. An uneasy feeling formed in the pit of your stomach. These plants were ready for pollination in horrid conditions.
Hmm...how peculiar.
For posterity’s sake you quickly picked one of the flowers and examined it as you walked. Thankfully, none of them seemed to notice you doing that. They always said something about contamination and lectured you on how you shouldn’t have been collecting samples. You always paid them no heed since you were protected by your fatigue suit and protection gear. A little bit of the plant’s pollen on your gloved fingers would be washed off by a chemical shower later. None of you had anything to worry about as you tucked the plant into a small, airtight container and placed it into your hip pack.
“Fuck this guy and fuck this compound.” Nadia angrily growled as she stepped over yet another corpse of a young woman. “If I was one of these girls I would’ve castrated him. The sick fuck…”
Once again you tried not to look at the woman you had to step over but you understood the deeper meanings of Nadia’s words. The compound you were traversing had been home to a religious fanatic and his forty wives, none of which were capable of having children. You’d remembered seeing adverts on TV when you were younger about how he promised to bring fertility back to every woman as well as the entire earth.
Large claims for a man who was currently dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The place held a very suffocating feeling, only amplified by the fact the creature your team was hunting obviously took a liking to killing women. You doubted Chris or D.C. understood the tense fear in the air nearly as well as you and Nadia. There were a lot of monsters who tended to prey on just women...and not just B.O.W.s.
“Right there with ya, sister.” D.C. chimed in again.
You looked over your shoulder, breathing a sigh of relief to see him scanning the hallway you’d just been in. Due to your second of not paying attention you hadn’t realized Chris and Nadia had stopped walking. You bumped right into Chris’ back, making him whirl around to face you, his face barely visible through the thick glass of his full face mask.
“S-sorry…” You squeaked, stepping back slightly. Chris turned back around and that’s when you saw it.
“Is that...what I think it is?” Nadia asked.
“Yeah, sure looks like it.” Chris shook his head. “Automatic safe door. There’s no way we’re going to be able to blow it open.”
Well, on any normal mission Chris would have been completely correct, except you had a few hobbies that the usual field researcher didn’t. You pulled one of your holopad link cables out of your side bag, plugged it into the pad, and set to work. The fanatics’ info had been on his computer terminal and you had extracted that earlier, which meant it would be easy for you to quickly crack the code on the automatic door.
“What are you doing?” Chris asked firmly as you knelt on the floor, unscrewing the tiny panel beneath the keypad.
“I’m unlocking it.” You said plainly. “Give me a minute and I’ll get it open, okay?”
You shot him a bit of a chastising look before plugging in your pad. It didn’t take long to quickly pull up any documents and previous passwords you’d found. You tried them through your link up system to bypass the security lockdown procedures and soon enough you’d found it.
“Bingo!” You smiled triumphantly, still kneeling by the door as it slowly opened. While you didn’t want to be so close to it, the door was going to close without the pad continuing to stay connected to it.
“The password was Aphrodi- ”
As soon as those words left your mouth the door opened fully and a soft gurgling could be heard from the dark corridor. Chris said something but you didn’t hear it as a handful of women appeared in the doorway. They shambled into the light and the sight of them made you jerk backwards.
“Stop!” Chris warned them but they kept moving at their slow pace.
The woman in front languidly lifted her head and you felt bile rise up in the back of your throat. Her irises completely filled up her entire sclera and her pupils were dilated crookedly. They were filled with tears and were unsettling to say the least. The worst part were the frothy strands of saliva and mucus that spilled out of her ears, nose, and mouth. Other than that she seemed to have no outward wounds, except she was missing a few fingernails.
“I said stop!” Chris enunciated, gripping his assault rifle tightly.
The foot of the last woman who straggled out behind the rest nudged your holopad on the floor, still connected to the door. She was in just as bad condition as the others but seemed to have enough wherewithal to look in your direction. Something about her outrageously dilated eyes forced a whimper out of your throat.
It happened so quickly you didn’t have a second to react and neither did Chris, Nadia, or D.C.
The woman who noticed you let out a screech and tackled you to the dusty floor. It took a moment before your body began to instinctively attempt to fight her off. Out of the corner of your eye you spotted three of the other women each trying to subdue your teammates. You let out a whine of fear as the woman let her tongue loll out of her mouth, it was black, and hungrily pressed it to the front of your glass mask.
She made throaty pants as she scratched and tried to grab ahold of the closures of the front of your protective fatigues. You finally let out a loud squeal of terror you had no idea you were holding in, seeming to give your attacker a second of pause. A gunshot rang out, and as it did the woman crawled off of you to stand.
You tried desperately to get to your own feet but the woman was soon joined by a second and the two of them grabbed each of your booted ankles. You kicked and screamed as the two of them dragged you towards the doorway. You heard the sound of a pane of glass breaking at your side.
The holopad lay broken into pieces underneath the sneakers of one of the women.
“Chris!” You screamed, trying to flip over onto your belly, trying desperately to stop getting pulled into the darkness.
The automatic door began to close and as it did you heard the sound of shuffling and more gunshots. A set of very strong arms wrapped around your torso and pulled but it was too late. Another trio of women emerged from the darkness and joined the two at your feet. Their strength, including the sudden decline, was too much and all of you slipped and fell down into what seemed like the entrance to a small cave.
The light was instantly cut off by the door above closing with a loud bang. It was nearly pitch black, save for the light of the flashlight strapped to a gun on the floor. Just as you were about to reach for it someone else did. The sounds of the infected women could be heard echoing off of the damp walls.