Ground Zero Revisited

This was far more, Anthony soon discovered, than some amateur operation that had stumbled upon Umbrella's knowledge. Staircases down led to staircases down, and down, and down, into a basement far more modern than the dilapidated building above. This was a full-blown BOW factory, incubating... zombies? They looked perfectly humanoid, and simplistic enough - though Tony of all people knew never to judge a book by its cover when it came to Umbrella's handiwork. Fortunately, these wild, artificial zombies appeared more interested in tearing each other limb from limb than entertaining their guest.

Head swivelling, eyes peeled, Tony only came to a stop at last when a hologram flashed into being in the corridor in front of him - a short, young girl, rendered in bright red light. The Red Queen. An instance of her, at least. He had half a mind to walk right through her and continue on his way, but chose to humour her. He squinted, unimpressed, at the holographic caretaker.

"And why's that?"

This was unexpected. Tony had learned to expect far more ruthless conduct from this famously formidable AI, instances of which had been employed to protect Umbrella's most sensitive assets in places where the tech allowed it. But she was outright allowing him a chance to walk away? He didn't believe that for a second. He was probably already being surrounded by monsters slinking upstairs through secret passages, if his experience of Umbrella facilities was anything to go by.

"I'm going to assume, based on the simple fact you haven't already set your security measures on me, that you don't know who I am." Wearing that same deadpan expression, Tony stepped forward, through the hologram - a gesture to dare her to stop him. "Three thousand, two hundred and fifty-nine BOWs, and you expect me to leave them be?" His hands clenched and relaxed, fingers stretched, wrists rolled. He fully expected to put them to use in the next few seconds.

About five steps beyond the hologram, Tony was given cause to stop. He set his jaw, perturbed at first that he bothered to listen to what he thought to be the emptiest of threats, but when the Queen spoke of a way of releasing this army of horrors onto the surface, he concluded that he couldn't go any further. He dared not call such a bluff. On the other hand, though, if their numbers were actively increasing, it would be all the more difficult to overcome them when they were eventually set loose, as he knew they would be. It was just a matter of when. Still...

Audibly grumbling his displeasure, Tony turned fully to face the hologram. Then it flickered out of sight. In its place was the hovering logo of -

"White Rabbit?" They were supposed to have been scattered long ago. Did some few still keep up their fight? "Wait a damn minute - who are you?"

Silence. Whoever was watching, and had subverted the Red Queen to speak to him, already appeared to have left their station. Tony's frown of displeasure deepened, but he could think of nothing better to do. He would kill the next ten minutes, he decided, by watching his entryway to make sure no sneaky Clots were being directed upwards in spite of the Queen's threat. It took him hardly any time at all to retrace his steps to the surface in bounding leaps up the staircases.

Who had just addressed him in the guise of the White Rabbit, and what was their plan for dismantling this army said to threaten Raccoon City from below?

Ten minutes passed uneventfully, and when the mystery intruder arrived, she found Anthony posted up in a chair, watching his entrance from a darker corner of the storeroom. He met her greeting with a curious furrow of the brow - that face was familiar. The holographic child appeared again, put a face to the name that jogged his memory.

"...Oh, shit. Alice? The Alice?" He rose quickly from his seat. "I take it you saw me come in. How long have you had eyes on this place? And how long have you known about what's down here, assuming your little red friend really was telling the truth about what I'd find?"

"Twelve years," Tony confirmed. "Right under everyone's noses. Jesus. You can't help but wonder how Umbrella still has this sort of capability, after spending so long more or less at war with the rest of the world."

Alice's briefing certainly gave credence to the thought that she'd had the place under surveillance, if her ability to access its systems and shut it down hadn't already. Hands in pockets, Tony turned his eyes in the direction of the staircase that started the long way down toward the building's grim secrets below. "That's my major concern dealt with, then," was his answer to the news that the monsters waiting inside had no way to reach the surface. "There are over three thousand of them down there, if the Queen was being straight with me. We'll be here a while if we want to go through them ourselves." He turned back to regard Alice. "Any suggestions?"

"Touche." The facility being unmanned, run solely by this instance of the Red Queen, would explain the distinct lack of any sort of welcome party. That said, the monsters within probably served well enough as their own security, when prying eyes needed to be clawed out. Unfortunately, they'd find him more than equal to any danger they could pose.

"Deactivating the cloning equipment is top priority," he decided. "Keeping their numbers from swelling any further will make everything else easier." He looked to Alice, and though he spoke so matter-of-factly, the quiet confidence in his eyes spoke volumes more. "Think you can keep up with me?"

Seemed she was as eager to get underway as he was. He followed close behind her, not to be left on the wayside - never to be left on the wayside when he was always the one fighting from the front. As the doors to the cavernous inner hall slid open, Tony stepped forward right alongside Alice to take a position on the upper platform.

Jesus Christ, they were packed in so tightly he couldn't even see the floor. The hall was filled with a cacophony of shrieking, gnashing, and the spilling of blood - which fell suddenly quieter as the intruders stepped in and most of the Clots stopped ripping each other apart long enough to look up towards the door. Even for him, that was a little unnerving to see. Alice, for her part, wasted no time in opening fire with a rifle that appeared to be unleashing laser bolts. Fascinating toys at her disposal - perhaps he'd ask if she were able to hook him up. He hadn't been able to bring any such equipment across the Atlantic with him, but then, he didn't really need any.

He shed the coat he was wearing, took a few steps back, broke into a run, and leapt forward - off the platform and into the fray. As he fell, he reared back his right arm, and in an instant it burst and reshaped, forming a mass of writhing tentacles tipped with blade-like protrusions of bone. They lashed forward into the throng of screaming Clots, blasting a handful sideways and opening a space for Tony to land. He gestured again, and the bladed tendrils whipped and thrashed all about him, separating heads from shoulders and arms from torsos. He had an image in his head of where he was relative to the door they came in through, and he kept it in mind as he started forward, whipping tentacles ripping the Clots apart and opening a comfortable distance in all directions.

The Clots were angry, ferocious little things. Frightening to the uninitiated, certainly, but child's play for the trained and hardened to deal with. While Alice blazed his trail, quite literally, across the vast room toward the far side, Tony followed her lead at as hurried a pace as he could manage through the horde pressing in on all sides. His tentacled limbs kept them firmly at bay, striking the limbs off any that strayed too close. So long as he could keep this up, they were no danger; so he pressed on, following the openings created for him by his mysterious partner.

From somewhere behind him, a peal of gunfire joined the song of Alice's hissing lasers over the din of the raging Clots. Louder than all of them, though, came the bestial roar of something altogether different - charging this way. One of the Fleshpounders had entered the fray, and was bowling through the Clots as if they weren't there on its way to beat down the intruders.

The moment he heard the roar, Tony knew the situation had just changed. He stopped on the spot, and his left arm shifted as well as the right, adding another handful of writhing tentacles to the mass that cut down the Clots all around him to clear him some space. Right as they came to rest, the Fleshpounder barged into view, saw-like implements whirling on the stumps of its arms as it swung them in Tony's direction. Tony stepped forward and ducked left, circling tightly around the Fleshpounder's right flank. The tendrils of his right arm retreated, the limb reformed as if nothing was unusual about it; he didn't want to risk getting them tangled in those blades. Instead, the spiked tendrils of his left hand whipped around to ensnare the massive creature's left leg, gripping tightly and pulling back sharply. Either he'd trip the beast over, or rip its leg out from beneath it altogether - either way, a floored opponent would be much easier to finish off.

The Fleshpounder was stronger and steadier on its feet than it looked; or maybe Tony was getting to be a little on the weedy side to be dealing with something like this head-on. Fortunately, there was no shortage of suitable biomass all around him. The tendrils of his left arm uncoiled quickly from the Fleshpounder's leg, retreating rather than be snared in its stubby arms, and Tony took a few steps back.

Out over his shoulder, those tendrils reached out, jabbing three of the nearest Clots in the face. At once, the scrabbling and shrieking creatures fell still and quiet, convulsing on the spot and dropping to their knees as all motor function suddenly failed them. Before Alice's eyes, their bodies began to wither, shrinking away in just seconds until three dead, emaciated husks were left to drop to the floor. Did Tony look like he'd gotten... somehow taller?

The Fleshpounder came at him again, bladed arms swinging wildly, and again the white-haired BOW dodged deftly around. This time, the tendrils retreated and reformed into a fist as he came around on the Fleshpounder's right, and he ducked to deliver a left hook with the impact of a truck to the outside of the beast's knee.

So that was the deal; the Fleshpounder was inducing its own berserker rage through pain, driving itself to keep fighting in spite of whatever damage its enemy might inflict. That would complicate matters for a little while, but something had to give, and it wouldn't be Tony. He continued to weave around the wailing fists of the Fleshpounder, reforming both of his arms so that he could strike his own hammer blows against its legs whenever an opening came. Meanwhile, still more writhing tendrils sprouted from his back, snaking out from beneath his shirt to strike down the oncoming Clots.

At the same time as he drove them away to keep his flanks clear for his battle with the Fleshpounder, he feasted upon them, leaving shrunken cadavers in his wake. With every Clot that died to sate his monstrous appetite, his blows fell harder against the Fleshpounder, and he dodged its return strikes more deftly. This was the true strength of his viral infection; every enemy eliminated could fuel his body and make him all the more potent. Eventually, even the sturdy Fleshpounder wouldn't be able to resist the thunderous blows of his fists and knees.

Scratch one Fleshpounder - two to go, and here came the second. He exchanged a look with Alice, nodded in acknowledgement of her instruction. She'd managed to take an opening to get the job done, so all that remained now to was to cleanse the facility.

"I've got the big guy. Help sanitise my six."

Tony locked eyes upon the second charging Fleshpounder, and reached for the corpse of the first. Right arm exploded once more into writhing tentacles, that coiled all around the beast and drove their points into its head and chest so that the BOW could feast on the main course. He shuddered under a rush of adrenaline, his very body looked to be growing bulkier beneath his clothes for a moment, and the Fleshpounder's body was shrinking away at alarming speed as Tony laid claim to its biomass.

Right at the last moment, with the second Fleshpounder screaming bloody murder and bearing down on him mere meters away, Tony whipped his arm forward and hauled the corpse off the floor, swinging it overhand like a gigantic hammer to crash down on his next opponent with strength that would crater the floor beneath its feet.

The charging Fleshpounder almost didn't seem to mind having its brother crash down on its head. It stumbled, but was not put off, and continued to bear down on Tony - until Tony wasn't there. He leapt clear over the head of his advancing foe, swinging his makeshift hammer through the air around himself and arcing it downwards to smash the second Fleshpounder over the back of his head.

What the fuck, this one could shoot lasers?!

"Thanks," Tony breathed over his shoulder in gratitude to Alice for pulling him quite literally out of the line of fire. The second Fleshpounder wasn't so fortunate, but hey, that was one fight over. While there was still time, Tony dispatched a few errant tentacles to claim the smoking corpse's biomass, one half at a time. Once again, his body's bulk appeared to shift beneath his clothes.

With the number of Clots thinning out by the second, Tony could see his next target clearly. He recalled his hungry tentacles, which coiled around themselves to form the shape of his right arm, bony claws in place of his fingers. He crouched, tensed, and leapt at the so-called King Fleshpounder like a shell from a tank gun, rocketing over its left shoulder and twisting to deliver an even more thunderously powerful punch across its jaw as he passed.