((More drabbles))
((Drabbles. You can see them laid out in a more orderly manner at The Table. Still violence/language. Feedback is more than welcome.))
Learning.
"What's the problem?" Leon looks over as Krauser mutters something at the book in his hands.
"Always end up having to leave books behind. Don't remember where I was in this one. I've started it, what, four times now?"
Leon shakes his head. "I heard you read a lot."
"Never got a good chance to go to college--always ended up being needed somewhere. I take classes where I can. Mostly, I read." He shrugs. "Found Art of War boring as hell. Most of that was 'yeah, knew that, what else have you got?'"
"Uh, On Killing?" Leon looks like he's trying to decide how to ask what Krauser doesn't know about that.
He looks back down at the book. "How most people don't actually want to kill. How we're trained to. How we go through with it and then deal with it." He hears his own voice flatten.
Leon opens his mouth to say something, then slowly nods and lets the topic go.
__
Fire.
A hard-bitten member of Special Forces can indeed sound as sulky as the next man. "I like the phoenix."
"Davis." Jack just shakes his head. "I'm not going into battle with a damned bird stamped on my gear. I don't care if it's on fire."
"His idea's a lizard! What's the difference?"
"One is breathing fire. The other is just burning up and dying. What's the message?"
"Well, the phoenix always comes back."
"I'm not going out in the first place. I side with the dragon vote."
__
Spade.
He can't say why he left the island. The villagers gather around him, momentarily, just listening to the plaga. Then they stump back to whatever routine they were stuck in. It's obvious the plaga doesn't grasp the finer points of the chore or the purpose behind them.
He's walked through lived-in houses with no sense of trespass, even as he pushes by moving bodies, because nobody owns them anymore. He glances at rotting books and disintegrating kitchens. There's bloodstains so old they should be scentless, but they've never been cleaned; the uniquely scented molds that break down animal proteins are still hanging on.
And now he's just standing outside in the ruins of what was a prosperous farm, staring down at an old, rust-eaten shovel. Nearby a host stands outside the gate with a hatchet in his hand, red gaze fixed on the doors, swaying.
__
Orange.
He knew what he was getting into. He knew the cost, he knew why, he knew the outcome. He was able to deal with the growth of the plaga. He was able to take the shooting pain as it laced into his nerves, the sense of intrusion as an animal mind was suddenly in his thoughts, the squirming sensation as the growing plaga found room for itself.
He doesn't know why this detail bothers him.
He draws the knife, just tracing a scratch over his palm. A fine line of red shows. Not enough to set the plaga's reactions off, flood his body with regenerative signals and powers.
He closes his hand tightly around the blade. The plaga sends a jagged signal of surprise through his brain. Orange runs through his fingers and splatters onto the blue carpet. He stares down at it as it soaks in, running a thumb across the closing cut, willing himself to get used to it already.
It isn't working.
__
Air.
He's never asked for mercy. He grants it, though. He draws in air, holds it, and gets out, for the last time he'll say it: "just shoot him."
The prisoner's just glaring at him through his hastily applied bandages. He hasn't even looked at any of the others. Jack knows why he's the target; he's the weakest enemy in the Jeep. The air's thick with pain and hate. There's no way to ignore him. Their feet are almost touching. He stares back, blank, unreadable as he can be. He knows every sign of weakness is being catalogued: his shallow breathing, the pauses and huffs he can't help as they move. He knows how much it galls their prisoner to have just been the one to emit that small sound of pain.
The rage in the prisoner's eyes doesn't fade until the needle goes in and his face softens to glazed relaxation, then sleep. Krauser nods. Relentless drive? That's an attitude he can get behind. You've got it, terrorist shrimp. And now that the enemy's out, at the next bump: "sonuvabitch!" He shuts it, for the sake of the team.
"You really could have split the morphine," the longsuffering medic points out. "We had enough to take the edge off the pain for both of you." He might as well say "I told you so."
"He's just a kid," is all Jack says. Partially because they just hit a pothole. He hisses slightly and focusses on the taste of air through his teeth. There's no hate in it now.
__
Red.
He thinks it's funny that it's his color as much as hers.
He watches the flickers of shades as she paces. She's not pleased with this mission at all. Neither is he, if he has to admit it. He just wants to get the job done and get out of the way. They both know what's coming.
He can take isolation, but it's been a long time since he's spoken with someone who's on something like his side--or his reality, come to think of it. Hell, he'd be ready to talk to her some more. Just so long as he doesn't have to listen to more of Saddler's gloating about how he's united the people in faith--
Krauser closes his eyes and sees red.
__
How?
How is the other mystery. Why is a total loss. How is worse.
There's nothing in his blood, nothing in any of the samples they took when he insisted on more tests. So what was it? What happened? He doesn't know.
Sometimes he thinks he's gone insane. Sometimes he thinks it's killing him. In the occasional moment of weakness, he wishes it had. But it didn't before and it can't now, and all he can do is push forward.
__
Middles.
Sometimes, he thinks, listening to the footsteps, you get moments like these. Crossroads. Times where you're headed to the point of no return. He thrives on these instants when you can change the world.
The past can die, and then nothing will hold him back. He leaps for the future, knife in hand. And only catches a slice. He goes with it, goes through a fight that's a good test, and for a moment he thinks he's got his peace after all--but then there's a gunshot, his hand goes numb, Leon kicks him, and he comes up a target.
He feels cheated. Call that an ending? But the disappointment fades quickly. He can find another shot. And both Wesker and Saddler will pay him.
__
What?
Krauser’s still high on adrenaline. “We’re tied in life-saving again.” Leon, dripping, just pants for air and shakes salt water out of his hair. Krauser goes on. “I hate it when you think you know someone and then they try killing you. If you hadn’t had the speargun, that would’ve been my brains all over the deck. I saw you catch on right when I did.” He didn’t have to leap off the boat, either, not even when the explosions started. Experience. “I think he meant to give himself away. Eventually you're sick of lies.”
“Thanks for fishing me out.” Leon shakes his head again. “Hearing’s still coming back. I didn’t catch that.”
Krauser’s seething with annoyance at the close shave, at his misplaced trust, at the surprise of betrayal. He opens his mouth to explain a little better, which turns out to be: “I’m bi.”
“What?” Leon looks at him, brow furrowed, like he knows Krauser actually spoke a great truth in fluent Venusian, only he misheard. Jack could still salvage the lie.
“Bisexual. Some in the team know.” He’s always considering the career risk versus the honesty factor. Kennedy’s all right; he's not going to turn on them. “Just saying because I’m not going to hide from my own people all the damn time. Should know who you’re dealing with.”
Leon nods, flopping over damply to lie on his back and let the water drain out of his shoes. “Okay.” He’s pretty unreadable, mostly with exhaustion from the environmental beating. Then he frowns, looking over. “You know, the way he acted was strange. I could tell something was coming. It looked like he was trying to set us up and tip us off at the same time. I think he wanted to confess. You saw it, right?”
__
Purple.
He's young. The new kid on the block. The plaga's anxious to please, and it moves to activity fast, potentially giving away far too much. He has to learn to be ahead of his own thoughts, to predict when he's going to think something that signals it to prepare for action. He learns the cues.
Which means a long, long time afterwards, the sight of a purple-clad back in front of him sends him automatically scrambling. He always instantly suppresses the part of his brain that just wants to sink the knife between the fascist's shoulderblades and twist.
__
Heart.
He's seen what the others are under their skins. In his state, he reflects that this place gets the stories he read as a kid all twisted around. There's the friar, the prince, the power behind the throne--he can't remember the word for that. He remembers as a kid, he just wanted to be a knight--was it knight-errant? What was the name for champion?--so screw the other roles.
Saddler is a giant spider, all-seeing, crouched in the web he controls. Mendez? Some sort of towering, long-armed form, how the priest thinks of himself, squared. Salazar--well, he's pretty isolated. But the continual reliance on the two Hands, powerful agents in his total control, pieces of a body the little guy'll never have, tells him something.
He knows what passes for the plaga's consciousness is patterning itself off of his. And he gets a combination shield and lance. Krauser's reasonably sure laughter's not supposed to hurt this much.
__
Strangers.
It's a nice park. Could use more shade, more water, more trees. But it's still a damn pleasant spot to be.
Krauser sits and watches the children play, watches perfectly ordinary people going about their business, watches people his age walk and hold hands and flirt. He hears snippets of conversation from a nearby pair about starting college.
Two years away, in Basic, in starting life as a soldier, and he feels like he's from a different world. He fights to protect these people, though, so he walks around with them until he can shake the disconnected feeling.
__
If.
He was nearly a Tyrant.
He knows he wouldn't put up with that--Fascist bullshit, what's Wesker trying to say? But that was the package deal. Incredible power, extreme physical advancement, and a position to influence events. His first major mission proves to be just as much opportunity, and he sees something that has to be done. So he takes it.
When two Tyrant specimens being manufactured at the facility he was slated for are seized and destroyed, he just shakes his head.
__
Earth.
He sheds what he was and becomes something else as easily as breaking out of a chrysalis. He doesn't bother thinking about his metamorphosis. He just accepts it and moves. He's stronger. Faster. And now he's fucking free.
He barely touches the ground. He leaves the labs, running over the floors and ignoring the chemical scents, and roams the outdoors instead. He climbs walls, first, to test his strength. Then it's jumping up and catching rock outcroppings--they shatter in his hands, early on. Then it's leaping up to the tops of columns. And then it's a flat-out free-for-all. The world is his jungle gym.
He feels elemental. He covers ground as he thinks. Soon he'll have to report in, plan the next stage, find ways to send the early lab records of his progress. Soon is not now. Right now, he's just going to test his newly expanded limits. And judging by the exhaustion that should be swimming over him, but isn't, he's got all day.
He feels a lot better.
__
Colourless
Sera isn't here, now.
Neither is anyone else. The lab is still and quiet. The plaga tests the dead iron maiden hanging from the ceiling for reaction with a brief short-range warble. Nothing. Safe. True, they've got almost no memory, but he hates the presence of any witnesses.
He moves by it, glancing up into its eyes from reflex. A childhood memory tries to intrude: cracked ice. He bats it aside and starts through the lab, checking petri dish after petri dish.
And there it is; one with the faintest score mark standing out on its underside, visible through the murky white gel. He looks at the number inked into its side and heads for the filing cabinet. He looks up at its eyes again as he goes by. It's someone, stripped of humanity, hope, destroyed and hung on a meat hook.
But he's seen that before. The door closes behind him. In the stillness of the room, its diamond eyes shine.
__
School.
Name, rank, and serial number flow from his lips, although he barely remembers where the breaks go in the words now.
He knows his hands are going to scar--he doesn't know if people will be able to look at his nails and see what happened.
Before this, he didn't have to know what kind of marks torture leaves. He didn't know exactly how far he'd get before he screamed. He always secretly suspected he'd cry. He's astonished he hasn't, but he holds to. . . however he's not and lets the paths inside that lead to tears break away.
He didn't know how he'd think under the pressure of imminent agony. He didn't understand what it would be like to be helpless and trapped and offered reprieve just for a sentence, for any other sounds other than what he's been saying.
He gives name, rank, serial number. And then he screams. He doesn't know how long he can keep doing this.
Krauser's learning.
__
Sound.
"Be quiet."
The plaga tries to sing a response. He closes his eyes and tries to gather patience. He knows they're not really communicating; he gets its answers vaguely, secondhand. And it keeps trying to use its ingrained language of sounds to get through to him.
He can almost hear the others through it. There's the amplified buzz from the castle as Salazar and his hands communicate in three-part chorus. There's Saddler's sharp, loud tones that always make it freeze at what it's doing. Mendez has his drone. And there's the nonstop rhythm of the cultist, like a bunch of damned cicadas.
His plaga's been told that he likes the quiet. So far, it hasn't really bought it.
__
Food.
He'd always eat anything. Now. . . he dislikes cold things. Plants, whatever. But it's meat, warm but uncooked, the fresher the better, that actually makes him hungry.
He couldn't say if Mendez ate humans. He knew about the others' little dietary tendencies. He knows Wesker probably wouldn't care so long as nobody irreplaceable were to get munched. He knows the handlers on C level consider it a possibility. And he's rather amused by the way the lab techs start to get jumpy when dinner arrives late.
Above all, he knows he's a predator now. He loves it. He's thought of no real reason not to consider people a prey source. It's merely that he just. . . wants not to. So he doesn't analyze why. That's always been a good enough reason, in his book.
__
Children.
He hates seeing what happened to ordinary people, when he pays attention to it. They never saw combat, never picked up a weapon, never did more than shove someone when they hit rage. . . and now they're just all half-eaten brains dragged around by an animal.
After the initial surprise, despite the occasional pause to remember his purpose, he can ignore them easily because they're ghosts. There's no future in the village. The children were gone before he was even assigned here.
__
Death.
He knows he's changed.
He goes over it now, again and again: the first man he ever killed. He remembers the terrible remorse despite the fact he'd have died if he hadn't acted. He remembers the resistance to the knife. He remembers waiting for a sign to quit stabbing. He remembers looking down in disbelief, waiting for him to move, to get up, and knowing at the same time he'd just have to cut him again if he did.
He remembers all that. The thing is, he can't remember exactly why it bothered him so much in the first place.
__
White.
He knows exactly how much further he can twist before tendons start to give and joints start to grind. He knows how much further beyond that it will be before they hear very bad snapping sounds. And he’s shared his expertise. He’s sure the man never knew that a simple touch to the side of his head could cause this much pain.
“It’s typical of the world we live in," and maybe this particular part of the South, an unusually racist area, "that a thing like you can say things like that to a lady,” he enunciates the term just in case the man was thinking about repeating what he said earlier and really pissing him off, “like she is.” Krauser increases the pressure on the specific point on the side of his skull just a bit, watching as the man grinds the other side of his face against the bricks trying to get away. He eases off, not as much as he was before. “I saw she’s in the service. She’s like me: she dedicates and risks her life keeping you free to be offensive as all fuck. It gets to me that she’s used to dickweeds like you talking shit to her.
"What caused you to end up here--because she was handling you just fine, she didn’t need me to come in--is that you had to start being racist about me. Whimper if you hear me.” He twists just a fraction further, nodding sympathetically at the sound. “What, I’ll agree with your bullshit because I’m white?” He doesn’t loosen his hold again, and the man’s breathing is changing to the shattered pattern of pain and panic. “Pulling the knife on me was dumb, but not half as stupid as that. See where assumptions based on skin color get you?”
“Let him go, Jack.”
Hunh. Krauser glances over. Kennedy can walk quietly when he really wants to. “You’re in luck. One of my friends, not one of yours.” He steps back, yanking the man off-balance and shoving him away. He watches him run, keeping his back turned to Leon as a hint. It’s doubtful Leon will accept the idea that he isn’t involved-
“Am I going to be called up as a witness tomorrow?”
Krauser reaches over to the bricks and drags his fingertips across them, holding his hand up, turned towards Kennedy. “No blood.”
Still not taking the dismissal. “Want to tell me what was that about?”
He doesn’t need to justify himself to Leon. Nor does he particularly feel in the mood to explain. Krauser glances down to the alley floor and picks up the quickest way to end the conversation: the seventy-five-dollar blade, probably picked up at a gun show. Or a skinhead rally. He slams it between the bricks and brings a fist down on the flat. The hilt and upper half spang off the concrete at his feet. “We were just discussing who gets to play with knives.”
__
Teammates.
He knew they had the same attitude to a man. They understood one at a time would fall, but the team would go on.
He'd been ready to die for them.
He'd have been glad to die with them.
He came within inches of doing both. He ended up alone anyway.
__
Friends.
It bothers him sometimes that he doesn't have much of a life outside the military. He looks for lovers outside the ranks--that's just good sense, male or female--but he had more time for that when he didn't wear the beret, and the last one's moved on after another top-secret mission kept him away for a week longer than it should have. He doesn't bear a grudge--not knowing if someone's alive or dead or missing is a hell of a burden to wait at home with.
He has no birth family, he's got no lover. He's got his comrades in arms. They're his brothers and friends. That's more than some people have.
They're enough.
__
Touch.
She never thought she'd be into this. He can tell just from the way she waved a hearthstone at him, and now she's just messing with the pottery in the corner. She's not cut out for it. There's war in her land and she never saw it coming.
He doesn't know the words to tell her to put the rock down and just follow him. He couldn't, anyway--she doesn't really trust him, either, he's just preferable company to the bestial mercenaries outside. And is he sure his chances are all that much better than hers? He was surprised on a scouting trip, he's got no gun, and the warriors outside are almost animal. At least she knows the land.
She clinks through pots, ignoring the shouts outside. She doesn't get what this fight is about, even, doesn't understand that it's going to come down to pure will to have the attacker die instead. He turns at a step outside, starting to nock an arrow to the bow that must have belonged to her husband, eyes on the door.
It's a touch to the side of the face that turns him, cold and clammy. Her eyes are hard behind wildly drawn stripes over her face. And she just trailed a line of cold stickiness over his jaw. He looks at her hand as she lifts it again: her fingers are blood red.
It's symbolic defiance, determination. The enemy's going to know they're out for blood. And if they're found, no matter what condition their bodies are in, the search party will know how they went out. He holds still. The second stripe turns into the scrape of work-roughened skin against his face as the paint runs thin. Something thuds against the door. She trails two fingers in a jagged zigzag along his cheekbone and steps back, dropping the small pot of paint so that she can take the knife he offers. He draws again and turns, letting the arrow fly as the door breaks.
__
Lightning.
He didn't get it. He almost feels stupid.
The mutated creature has finished expiring at his feet. Blood still dribbles darkly down its second tongue. He can see how badly he fucked it up with the incendiary grenade when another flash of lightning hits.
All night, and he'd just been concerned about killing it so that he could stay in the shelter of the caves for longer than a few hours. He'd been worried about exposure. He'd feared the storm for stealing his night vision. Christ. He patiently holds his arm in front of his face until the night obligingly goes full of white and shows him just how deep the cuts are. The rain is sluicing into the wounds, washing the signs of weakness away.
He's going to do the smart thing, he's going to go back under cover, start a fire, dry out--but it doesn't matter, he could stand out here until dawn. He knows now he can survive the last few hours of being stranded simply because he's not going to let it kill him. He glances down again, stomping down on the exposed part of its primary head and snapping it free with a kick. Then he takes the caves for the last damned time.
__
Ends.
Eric stares straight ahead. Jack crouches in front of him, staring into unseeing eyes. Pieces are falling into place, and the rage is going to be there as soon as Jack's able to think again, but right now he's too stunned to absorb what he's learned. He can see him breathing, but there's nobody in there anymore.
Krauser opens his mouth to ask him to come back. For a moment, he's ready to beg that he not be gone like everyone else, but he already knows. It's over. It's all over. The plea dies unspoken, unbreathable air in his throat.
He doesn't intend to ever admit that he's got no memory of what happens next, not until he's standing, dead tired, covered in blood and watching the flames. He knows that wouldn't be believed, anyway.
__
Sunrise.
It's so beautiful it makes his chest ache. Or maybe that's the plaga sealing the last of the seam shut. He has to admit, that's a bit more likely.
If he saw either of them below, he'd drop from the helicopter and start round three. He doesn't, so he accepts that this is just time to heal, prepare for the next round, and bring the fight to them again.
He's survived again. He's absorbed in the feeling of cold air rushing by his face and the sound of the helicopter blades and the warmth of the rich daybreak on his skin. He's pleased by the smoke of the island, glad to have the deceptions over with. Something unimportant has been stripped away in the process of dying twice, leaving him harder to awe, harder to break, stronger. He tilts his face to the light. It's a beautiful dawn.
__
Outsides.
The story is written on his body. In the white marks under his nails, in the indented scatter of marks on his thigh, in the ridges on his face.
He trails a thumb along the longest, newest cut. Beneath it, he can feel the dense ridge of tissue, internal scarring from where the plaga broke his chest open and sealed it shut again.
This is how he is. He doesn't care who sees.
__
Learning.
"What's the problem?" Leon looks over as Krauser mutters something at the book in his hands.
"Always end up having to leave books behind. Don't remember where I was in this one. I've started it, what, four times now?"
Leon shakes his head. "I heard you read a lot."
"Never got a good chance to go to college--always ended up being needed somewhere. I take classes where I can. Mostly, I read." He shrugs. "Found Art of War boring as hell. Most of that was 'yeah, knew that, what else have you got?'"
"Uh, On Killing?" Leon looks like he's trying to decide how to ask what Krauser doesn't know about that.
He looks back down at the book. "How most people don't actually want to kill. How we're trained to. How we go through with it and then deal with it." He hears his own voice flatten.
Leon opens his mouth to say something, then slowly nods and lets the topic go.
__
Fire.
A hard-bitten member of Special Forces can indeed sound as sulky as the next man. "I like the phoenix."
"Davis." Jack just shakes his head. "I'm not going into battle with a damned bird stamped on my gear. I don't care if it's on fire."
"His idea's a lizard! What's the difference?"
"One is breathing fire. The other is just burning up and dying. What's the message?"
"Well, the phoenix always comes back."
"I'm not going out in the first place. I side with the dragon vote."
__
Spade.
He can't say why he left the island. The villagers gather around him, momentarily, just listening to the plaga. Then they stump back to whatever routine they were stuck in. It's obvious the plaga doesn't grasp the finer points of the chore or the purpose behind them.
He's walked through lived-in houses with no sense of trespass, even as he pushes by moving bodies, because nobody owns them anymore. He glances at rotting books and disintegrating kitchens. There's bloodstains so old they should be scentless, but they've never been cleaned; the uniquely scented molds that break down animal proteins are still hanging on.
And now he's just standing outside in the ruins of what was a prosperous farm, staring down at an old, rust-eaten shovel. Nearby a host stands outside the gate with a hatchet in his hand, red gaze fixed on the doors, swaying.
__
Orange.
He knew what he was getting into. He knew the cost, he knew why, he knew the outcome. He was able to deal with the growth of the plaga. He was able to take the shooting pain as it laced into his nerves, the sense of intrusion as an animal mind was suddenly in his thoughts, the squirming sensation as the growing plaga found room for itself.
He doesn't know why this detail bothers him.
He draws the knife, just tracing a scratch over his palm. A fine line of red shows. Not enough to set the plaga's reactions off, flood his body with regenerative signals and powers.
He closes his hand tightly around the blade. The plaga sends a jagged signal of surprise through his brain. Orange runs through his fingers and splatters onto the blue carpet. He stares down at it as it soaks in, running a thumb across the closing cut, willing himself to get used to it already.
It isn't working.
__
Air.
He's never asked for mercy. He grants it, though. He draws in air, holds it, and gets out, for the last time he'll say it: "just shoot him."
The prisoner's just glaring at him through his hastily applied bandages. He hasn't even looked at any of the others. Jack knows why he's the target; he's the weakest enemy in the Jeep. The air's thick with pain and hate. There's no way to ignore him. Their feet are almost touching. He stares back, blank, unreadable as he can be. He knows every sign of weakness is being catalogued: his shallow breathing, the pauses and huffs he can't help as they move. He knows how much it galls their prisoner to have just been the one to emit that small sound of pain.
The rage in the prisoner's eyes doesn't fade until the needle goes in and his face softens to glazed relaxation, then sleep. Krauser nods. Relentless drive? That's an attitude he can get behind. You've got it, terrorist shrimp. And now that the enemy's out, at the next bump: "sonuvabitch!" He shuts it, for the sake of the team.
"You really could have split the morphine," the longsuffering medic points out. "We had enough to take the edge off the pain for both of you." He might as well say "I told you so."
"He's just a kid," is all Jack says. Partially because they just hit a pothole. He hisses slightly and focusses on the taste of air through his teeth. There's no hate in it now.
__
Red.
He thinks it's funny that it's his color as much as hers.
He watches the flickers of shades as she paces. She's not pleased with this mission at all. Neither is he, if he has to admit it. He just wants to get the job done and get out of the way. They both know what's coming.
He can take isolation, but it's been a long time since he's spoken with someone who's on something like his side--or his reality, come to think of it. Hell, he'd be ready to talk to her some more. Just so long as he doesn't have to listen to more of Saddler's gloating about how he's united the people in faith--
Krauser closes his eyes and sees red.
__
How?
How is the other mystery. Why is a total loss. How is worse.
There's nothing in his blood, nothing in any of the samples they took when he insisted on more tests. So what was it? What happened? He doesn't know.
Sometimes he thinks he's gone insane. Sometimes he thinks it's killing him. In the occasional moment of weakness, he wishes it had. But it didn't before and it can't now, and all he can do is push forward.
__
Middles.
Sometimes, he thinks, listening to the footsteps, you get moments like these. Crossroads. Times where you're headed to the point of no return. He thrives on these instants when you can change the world.
The past can die, and then nothing will hold him back. He leaps for the future, knife in hand. And only catches a slice. He goes with it, goes through a fight that's a good test, and for a moment he thinks he's got his peace after all--but then there's a gunshot, his hand goes numb, Leon kicks him, and he comes up a target.
He feels cheated. Call that an ending? But the disappointment fades quickly. He can find another shot. And both Wesker and Saddler will pay him.
__
What?
Krauser’s still high on adrenaline. “We’re tied in life-saving again.” Leon, dripping, just pants for air and shakes salt water out of his hair. Krauser goes on. “I hate it when you think you know someone and then they try killing you. If you hadn’t had the speargun, that would’ve been my brains all over the deck. I saw you catch on right when I did.” He didn’t have to leap off the boat, either, not even when the explosions started. Experience. “I think he meant to give himself away. Eventually you're sick of lies.”
“Thanks for fishing me out.” Leon shakes his head again. “Hearing’s still coming back. I didn’t catch that.”
Krauser’s seething with annoyance at the close shave, at his misplaced trust, at the surprise of betrayal. He opens his mouth to explain a little better, which turns out to be: “I’m bi.”
“What?” Leon looks at him, brow furrowed, like he knows Krauser actually spoke a great truth in fluent Venusian, only he misheard. Jack could still salvage the lie.
“Bisexual. Some in the team know.” He’s always considering the career risk versus the honesty factor. Kennedy’s all right; he's not going to turn on them. “Just saying because I’m not going to hide from my own people all the damn time. Should know who you’re dealing with.”
Leon nods, flopping over damply to lie on his back and let the water drain out of his shoes. “Okay.” He’s pretty unreadable, mostly with exhaustion from the environmental beating. Then he frowns, looking over. “You know, the way he acted was strange. I could tell something was coming. It looked like he was trying to set us up and tip us off at the same time. I think he wanted to confess. You saw it, right?”
__
Purple.
He's young. The new kid on the block. The plaga's anxious to please, and it moves to activity fast, potentially giving away far too much. He has to learn to be ahead of his own thoughts, to predict when he's going to think something that signals it to prepare for action. He learns the cues.
Which means a long, long time afterwards, the sight of a purple-clad back in front of him sends him automatically scrambling. He always instantly suppresses the part of his brain that just wants to sink the knife between the fascist's shoulderblades and twist.
__
Heart.
He's seen what the others are under their skins. In his state, he reflects that this place gets the stories he read as a kid all twisted around. There's the friar, the prince, the power behind the throne--he can't remember the word for that. He remembers as a kid, he just wanted to be a knight--was it knight-errant? What was the name for champion?--so screw the other roles.
Saddler is a giant spider, all-seeing, crouched in the web he controls. Mendez? Some sort of towering, long-armed form, how the priest thinks of himself, squared. Salazar--well, he's pretty isolated. But the continual reliance on the two Hands, powerful agents in his total control, pieces of a body the little guy'll never have, tells him something.
He knows what passes for the plaga's consciousness is patterning itself off of his. And he gets a combination shield and lance. Krauser's reasonably sure laughter's not supposed to hurt this much.
__
Strangers.
It's a nice park. Could use more shade, more water, more trees. But it's still a damn pleasant spot to be.
Krauser sits and watches the children play, watches perfectly ordinary people going about their business, watches people his age walk and hold hands and flirt. He hears snippets of conversation from a nearby pair about starting college.
Two years away, in Basic, in starting life as a soldier, and he feels like he's from a different world. He fights to protect these people, though, so he walks around with them until he can shake the disconnected feeling.
__
If.
He was nearly a Tyrant.
He knows he wouldn't put up with that--Fascist bullshit, what's Wesker trying to say? But that was the package deal. Incredible power, extreme physical advancement, and a position to influence events. His first major mission proves to be just as much opportunity, and he sees something that has to be done. So he takes it.
When two Tyrant specimens being manufactured at the facility he was slated for are seized and destroyed, he just shakes his head.
__
Earth.
He sheds what he was and becomes something else as easily as breaking out of a chrysalis. He doesn't bother thinking about his metamorphosis. He just accepts it and moves. He's stronger. Faster. And now he's fucking free.
He barely touches the ground. He leaves the labs, running over the floors and ignoring the chemical scents, and roams the outdoors instead. He climbs walls, first, to test his strength. Then it's jumping up and catching rock outcroppings--they shatter in his hands, early on. Then it's leaping up to the tops of columns. And then it's a flat-out free-for-all. The world is his jungle gym.
He feels elemental. He covers ground as he thinks. Soon he'll have to report in, plan the next stage, find ways to send the early lab records of his progress. Soon is not now. Right now, he's just going to test his newly expanded limits. And judging by the exhaustion that should be swimming over him, but isn't, he's got all day.
He feels a lot better.
__
Colourless
Sera isn't here, now.
Neither is anyone else. The lab is still and quiet. The plaga tests the dead iron maiden hanging from the ceiling for reaction with a brief short-range warble. Nothing. Safe. True, they've got almost no memory, but he hates the presence of any witnesses.
He moves by it, glancing up into its eyes from reflex. A childhood memory tries to intrude: cracked ice. He bats it aside and starts through the lab, checking petri dish after petri dish.
And there it is; one with the faintest score mark standing out on its underside, visible through the murky white gel. He looks at the number inked into its side and heads for the filing cabinet. He looks up at its eyes again as he goes by. It's someone, stripped of humanity, hope, destroyed and hung on a meat hook.
But he's seen that before. The door closes behind him. In the stillness of the room, its diamond eyes shine.
__
School.
Name, rank, and serial number flow from his lips, although he barely remembers where the breaks go in the words now.
He knows his hands are going to scar--he doesn't know if people will be able to look at his nails and see what happened.
Before this, he didn't have to know what kind of marks torture leaves. He didn't know exactly how far he'd get before he screamed. He always secretly suspected he'd cry. He's astonished he hasn't, but he holds to. . . however he's not and lets the paths inside that lead to tears break away.
He didn't know how he'd think under the pressure of imminent agony. He didn't understand what it would be like to be helpless and trapped and offered reprieve just for a sentence, for any other sounds other than what he's been saying.
He gives name, rank, serial number. And then he screams. He doesn't know how long he can keep doing this.
Krauser's learning.
__
Sound.
"Be quiet."
The plaga tries to sing a response. He closes his eyes and tries to gather patience. He knows they're not really communicating; he gets its answers vaguely, secondhand. And it keeps trying to use its ingrained language of sounds to get through to him.
He can almost hear the others through it. There's the amplified buzz from the castle as Salazar and his hands communicate in three-part chorus. There's Saddler's sharp, loud tones that always make it freeze at what it's doing. Mendez has his drone. And there's the nonstop rhythm of the cultist, like a bunch of damned cicadas.
His plaga's been told that he likes the quiet. So far, it hasn't really bought it.
__
Food.
He'd always eat anything. Now. . . he dislikes cold things. Plants, whatever. But it's meat, warm but uncooked, the fresher the better, that actually makes him hungry.
He couldn't say if Mendez ate humans. He knew about the others' little dietary tendencies. He knows Wesker probably wouldn't care so long as nobody irreplaceable were to get munched. He knows the handlers on C level consider it a possibility. And he's rather amused by the way the lab techs start to get jumpy when dinner arrives late.
Above all, he knows he's a predator now. He loves it. He's thought of no real reason not to consider people a prey source. It's merely that he just. . . wants not to. So he doesn't analyze why. That's always been a good enough reason, in his book.
__
Children.
He hates seeing what happened to ordinary people, when he pays attention to it. They never saw combat, never picked up a weapon, never did more than shove someone when they hit rage. . . and now they're just all half-eaten brains dragged around by an animal.
After the initial surprise, despite the occasional pause to remember his purpose, he can ignore them easily because they're ghosts. There's no future in the village. The children were gone before he was even assigned here.
__
Death.
He knows he's changed.
He goes over it now, again and again: the first man he ever killed. He remembers the terrible remorse despite the fact he'd have died if he hadn't acted. He remembers the resistance to the knife. He remembers waiting for a sign to quit stabbing. He remembers looking down in disbelief, waiting for him to move, to get up, and knowing at the same time he'd just have to cut him again if he did.
He remembers all that. The thing is, he can't remember exactly why it bothered him so much in the first place.
__
White.
He knows exactly how much further he can twist before tendons start to give and joints start to grind. He knows how much further beyond that it will be before they hear very bad snapping sounds. And he’s shared his expertise. He’s sure the man never knew that a simple touch to the side of his head could cause this much pain.
“It’s typical of the world we live in," and maybe this particular part of the South, an unusually racist area, "that a thing like you can say things like that to a lady,” he enunciates the term just in case the man was thinking about repeating what he said earlier and really pissing him off, “like she is.” Krauser increases the pressure on the specific point on the side of his skull just a bit, watching as the man grinds the other side of his face against the bricks trying to get away. He eases off, not as much as he was before. “I saw she’s in the service. She’s like me: she dedicates and risks her life keeping you free to be offensive as all fuck. It gets to me that she’s used to dickweeds like you talking shit to her.
"What caused you to end up here--because she was handling you just fine, she didn’t need me to come in--is that you had to start being racist about me. Whimper if you hear me.” He twists just a fraction further, nodding sympathetically at the sound. “What, I’ll agree with your bullshit because I’m white?” He doesn’t loosen his hold again, and the man’s breathing is changing to the shattered pattern of pain and panic. “Pulling the knife on me was dumb, but not half as stupid as that. See where assumptions based on skin color get you?”
“Let him go, Jack.”
Hunh. Krauser glances over. Kennedy can walk quietly when he really wants to. “You’re in luck. One of my friends, not one of yours.” He steps back, yanking the man off-balance and shoving him away. He watches him run, keeping his back turned to Leon as a hint. It’s doubtful Leon will accept the idea that he isn’t involved-
“Am I going to be called up as a witness tomorrow?”
Krauser reaches over to the bricks and drags his fingertips across them, holding his hand up, turned towards Kennedy. “No blood.”
Still not taking the dismissal. “Want to tell me what was that about?”
He doesn’t need to justify himself to Leon. Nor does he particularly feel in the mood to explain. Krauser glances down to the alley floor and picks up the quickest way to end the conversation: the seventy-five-dollar blade, probably picked up at a gun show. Or a skinhead rally. He slams it between the bricks and brings a fist down on the flat. The hilt and upper half spang off the concrete at his feet. “We were just discussing who gets to play with knives.”
__
Teammates.
He knew they had the same attitude to a man. They understood one at a time would fall, but the team would go on.
He'd been ready to die for them.
He'd have been glad to die with them.
He came within inches of doing both. He ended up alone anyway.
__
Friends.
It bothers him sometimes that he doesn't have much of a life outside the military. He looks for lovers outside the ranks--that's just good sense, male or female--but he had more time for that when he didn't wear the beret, and the last one's moved on after another top-secret mission kept him away for a week longer than it should have. He doesn't bear a grudge--not knowing if someone's alive or dead or missing is a hell of a burden to wait at home with.
He has no birth family, he's got no lover. He's got his comrades in arms. They're his brothers and friends. That's more than some people have.
They're enough.
__
Touch.
She never thought she'd be into this. He can tell just from the way she waved a hearthstone at him, and now she's just messing with the pottery in the corner. She's not cut out for it. There's war in her land and she never saw it coming.
He doesn't know the words to tell her to put the rock down and just follow him. He couldn't, anyway--she doesn't really trust him, either, he's just preferable company to the bestial mercenaries outside. And is he sure his chances are all that much better than hers? He was surprised on a scouting trip, he's got no gun, and the warriors outside are almost animal. At least she knows the land.
She clinks through pots, ignoring the shouts outside. She doesn't get what this fight is about, even, doesn't understand that it's going to come down to pure will to have the attacker die instead. He turns at a step outside, starting to nock an arrow to the bow that must have belonged to her husband, eyes on the door.
It's a touch to the side of the face that turns him, cold and clammy. Her eyes are hard behind wildly drawn stripes over her face. And she just trailed a line of cold stickiness over his jaw. He looks at her hand as she lifts it again: her fingers are blood red.
It's symbolic defiance, determination. The enemy's going to know they're out for blood. And if they're found, no matter what condition their bodies are in, the search party will know how they went out. He holds still. The second stripe turns into the scrape of work-roughened skin against his face as the paint runs thin. Something thuds against the door. She trails two fingers in a jagged zigzag along his cheekbone and steps back, dropping the small pot of paint so that she can take the knife he offers. He draws again and turns, letting the arrow fly as the door breaks.
__
Lightning.
He didn't get it. He almost feels stupid.
The mutated creature has finished expiring at his feet. Blood still dribbles darkly down its second tongue. He can see how badly he fucked it up with the incendiary grenade when another flash of lightning hits.
All night, and he'd just been concerned about killing it so that he could stay in the shelter of the caves for longer than a few hours. He'd been worried about exposure. He'd feared the storm for stealing his night vision. Christ. He patiently holds his arm in front of his face until the night obligingly goes full of white and shows him just how deep the cuts are. The rain is sluicing into the wounds, washing the signs of weakness away.
He's going to do the smart thing, he's going to go back under cover, start a fire, dry out--but it doesn't matter, he could stand out here until dawn. He knows now he can survive the last few hours of being stranded simply because he's not going to let it kill him. He glances down again, stomping down on the exposed part of its primary head and snapping it free with a kick. Then he takes the caves for the last damned time.
__
Ends.
Eric stares straight ahead. Jack crouches in front of him, staring into unseeing eyes. Pieces are falling into place, and the rage is going to be there as soon as Jack's able to think again, but right now he's too stunned to absorb what he's learned. He can see him breathing, but there's nobody in there anymore.
Krauser opens his mouth to ask him to come back. For a moment, he's ready to beg that he not be gone like everyone else, but he already knows. It's over. It's all over. The plea dies unspoken, unbreathable air in his throat.
He doesn't intend to ever admit that he's got no memory of what happens next, not until he's standing, dead tired, covered in blood and watching the flames. He knows that wouldn't be believed, anyway.
__
Sunrise.
It's so beautiful it makes his chest ache. Or maybe that's the plaga sealing the last of the seam shut. He has to admit, that's a bit more likely.
If he saw either of them below, he'd drop from the helicopter and start round three. He doesn't, so he accepts that this is just time to heal, prepare for the next round, and bring the fight to them again.
He's survived again. He's absorbed in the feeling of cold air rushing by his face and the sound of the helicopter blades and the warmth of the rich daybreak on his skin. He's pleased by the smoke of the island, glad to have the deceptions over with. Something unimportant has been stripped away in the process of dying twice, leaving him harder to awe, harder to break, stronger. He tilts his face to the light. It's a beautiful dawn.
__
Outsides.
The story is written on his body. In the white marks under his nails, in the indented scatter of marks on his thigh, in the ridges on his face.
He trails a thumb along the longest, newest cut. Beneath it, he can feel the dense ridge of tissue, internal scarring from where the plaga broke his chest open and sealed it shut again.
This is how he is. He doesn't care who sees.
__