Woe to Felicity- Resident Evil

Chapter 27

"Did we have to see that?" You couldn't help but ask, but Chris didn't answer for a few moments as he silently mourned.

"I'm sorry," He turned away and started to leave the small room, "I just had to see for myself. I had to know."

Your stomach continued to bubble and churn when you followed Chris out of the break room, your mind couldn't help but process how horribly painful it would've felt to be killed by being eaten. Of all ways to die, Being eaten sounded just as unpleasant as you had watched with Kenneth's film. His screams will be fresh in your mind that's for sure. If only we had gotten there sooner.

The laboratory key you obtained granted you access to a few more rooms that were locked, including a large room that upon walking into felt like you were walking into an oven. The heat was immense, clouds of hot mist tickling your skin as you walked passed what looked like boiler machines in the middle of the room. No wonder it's so hot, there's a literal open fire coming out of one of the things.

For a moment it felt nice, the heat combating against your chills from walking around in still wet clothing. It was when you followed Chris to the door at the end of the boiler room did you stop to hear something rattle against metal.

"You hear that?" You asked as you turned around, looking up to make sure nothing was lingering on the ceiling. The sound came again, but it sounded more like someone was hopping or thrashing against metal.

"Now I do." Chris found an open vent next do the door, realizing the sounds were coming from the vent, sounding like someone or something was crawling around in it.

A loud screech caused you to jump before a creature introduced itself by jumping out of the open vent, landing on the ground between you and Chris.
You weren't sure what the hell it was: It was small, it's head with a sharp teeth mouth standing as tall up to your hip. It had a set of legs that looked like muscular ant legs, and two sets of arms that looked like a grasshoppers or a praying mantis's, complete with claws at the end. It's torso ended to a large abdomen similar to one of a fly, the body complete with a strange burnt orange color, making you just question even more what the hell it was supposed to be.

The skin on its face began to peel back as it screeched again, sounding like a high pitched roaring cicada. Chris was quick to fire first, his shotgun bullets causing the insect-like beast to fall back awkwardly on the ground near your feet. You stepped away as fast as you could, firing towards the head before it even had a chance to get up. It finally laid dead on the ground, twitching like an insect for a few moments before ceasing. To your absolute surprise, the body began to split open, the insides of the body hissing and bubbling. The arms and legs pulled away from the corpse as the torso began to decompose rapidly, releasing an awful rotting egg stench until nothing remained by a pile of maroon slimy looking goo and bits and pieces of arm and legs. The entire scent left you feeling sick to your stomach yet again.

"What the fuck!?" You found yourself yelling at it, looking up to Chris. "Did it just- How many more of these stupid random ass beasts do we need to kill??"

"Come on." Chris reached over and grabbed your arm slowly, bringing you to step over the dead body to follow him out the door.

"How much more ammo you got left?" He asked, purposely distracting you by having you check your magazines. "Two mags and a half I guess. A round of bullets left for my revolver." You exhaled at the new wave of heat the next room brought. It was so hot the water on your clothes started to evaporate into a fine mist, your forehead quickly forming a thin layer of sweat.

"What about you?" You asked as you followed Chris, who was approaching a familiar looking disk reader from before in the lab.

"A good couple of shells left," He responded while setting his shotgun aside on the closest surface, opening the disk case with his free hands. "Been using this thing more than my other gun, so if you need extra ammo I've got some to spare."

"Keep it," you insisted after a bit, watching the disk slide into the black box machine. "All I've been doing is aiming straight the head. I don't want to waste your ammo when the shotgun runs out."

"I don't mind giving it to someone who will use it." The machine reader beeped, green words displaying the completion of disk two. Leaving the intensely hot room was a good relief momentarily, continuing along the cool hallways while entering rooms you hadn't searched through properly yet. Along with finding a third and final disk, both of you were stumped when it came to the next set of doors that refused to open. They had no lock on them, no insert for a keycard, nothing.

"You think we should try the next door over?" You put it out as a proposition, Chris nodding as the two of you traveled to the next room over.
The next room was completely covered in tile from the walls up to the ceiling and all of the flooring. Along with a few medical shelves littered with bloody medical tools, they were a result with the large medical examination table in the middle of the room, with opened steel cuffs to keep the patient down. A cutting machine loomed over the bed, long since drenched in blood that had dropped down into the table where the victim once was.

"Up there." Chris motioned his head towards the left wall, right on top of a tile covered perch was a large vent opening, appearing to lead towards the other room you couldn't go in earlier.

"See anything?" You asked, seeing Chris tilt his head up to get a better view. It was quite dark on the other side, but he could make out a faint view of the wall in the other room, very similar to the one they were in.

"Not much. You feel alright to go in there?" Chris proposed, catching you a little off guard for a moment.

"Wait, you want me to go in there?" You pointed over to the vent.

"Yeah."

"Why me?"

"You look like you can fit through them better than I can."

"The vent's wide enough for you, Chris."

"But I'm asking you."

"Wha-you're taller!"

"You're smaller."

"Fine!" You groaned a bit after finding it useless to argue with this man anymore. Putting your gun in the holster, you stepped up slowly on a large metal chest, reaching up to grab the edges of the vent. Thinking for a moment, you turned back to look at Chris, who was simply standing there staring at you.

"Help me up."

He approached and cuffed his hands together, finding the bottom of your boot as you hoisted yourself up into the vent, crawling inside slowly. You proceeded to crawl over towards the other room, finding it much more darker than you expected it to be. You peeked your head through, seeing the sealed shut doors from earlier, along with two medical gurneys side by side with sealed black body bags. Over to the right was a desk, next to a steel cabinet and shelf with miscellaneous supplies.

"Hey, Chris?" You looked behind you a bit. "Slide over that last disk, the last reader is in here."

You heard the sounds of the plastic casing scraping as he tried his best to slide it over to you. You reached over and pulled it over with the tips of your fingers, holding onto it closely as you climbed fully into the room, jumping to the ground.

You walked to the desk and went to work, opening the case and sliding the disk in. The machine beeped, saying that disk three was complete. Now, their was the total mystery of what exactly all these disks opened.
As you turned away from the desk to walk back, you paused from the loud sounds of rustling. Looking over your shoulder, you noticed one of the body bags began to wiggle and shake, something scraping violently against the thick plastic.

A small series of claws tore through the thick material, along with the view of the familiar grasshopper-like arms. That's all it took for you to jump up to the vent as fast as you could, pushing yourself up with your arms to crawl back inside and leave the room as quickly as possible.