Chapter 104: Vitals: Stable

Rick picked himself up from the ground, completely healed. It didn’t mean he wasn’t both physically and mentally exhausted however. The fight for his survival, from the moment the BOW were freed, had felt like it lasted years and he wanted nothing else but to find a bed and sleep the rest of the day. Unfortunately, he couldn’t allow himself more break time. Who knows what would come next to try and take his life? More importantly, Angela may be in a need of help.

The turrets had gone silent and had stopped moving around their rail for reasons that escaped him. He had noticed their change in behavior while fighting the super Tyrant and knew it was her doing but making them stop altogether was a whole other thing.

Looking around to orient himself, he found the hole he and his opponent made in the wall to get here. To be more accurate, Rick got punched so hard he went through the concrete and fell here. The sound of gunfire drew his attention and he saw flashes of light up in the command room.

Not thinking twice, he ran to the wall and jumped up to the opening he had come from. A twenty feet distance he didn’t think he would have reached if not for his running start. After grabbing the ledge, he pulled himself up and ended back into the main corridor of the area.

While not worried about Angela being able to take care of herself, he still sprinted to her location. It was without surprise that he found her alive. She seemed unharmed but exhausted. What shocked him however was a dead mutated polar bear. The thing had claws almost as long as his forearm.

“You good?” Rick eyed the beast carefully, making his way to his partner.

Angela’s breathing was heavy. Too busy getting it under control and dealing with the sudden withdrawal of adrenalin, she nodded. Once she got her composure back, she had some few words to share. “I should be the one asking that question. Have you been fighting since we got separated?”

Rick shrugged. “Yeah, pretty much.”

With no mirth in her tone, Angela huffed. “‘Pretty much’ he says. It’s been…” She checked her watch. “More than three hours and you say it like it lasted the time for a smoke.”

“It felt like decades. I’m utterly beat, in truth. You?”

Slowly, Angela walked to one of the empty chairs near her. She didn’t sit so much that she just fell into it. “It was…. A festival. Lickers, zombies… Giant spiders and even a wild boar. There was also an elk… An elk! For god’s sake! Why an elk?!”

At this point Rick was hesitating between laughing depreciatively with her or being outwardly empathetic. He did neither as Angela continued her rant.

“Then there is this: a polar bear! I mean… It makes sense considering our geo-location but how in god’s name was that thing able to move?! The size of it alone…” She stopped herself, shaking her head in disbelief and focused on the issue at hand. “I found out who’s behind… our entrapment.”

That immediately piqued Rick’s curiosity. “Oh?”

“Yes. It’s an AI.”

“That…. Is unexpected but not out there.” After considering the possibility for a bit, Rick agreed it was possible.

“Its behavior is weird however. At first it tried to trap us, then it became annoying on my end, then… nothing but releasing more BOW when I got back here. It’s like… It couldn’t be bothered to deal with me. I think…” Her eyes were looking far away now, mentally looking back at everything that had happened. “I think I… was tested. It could have locked me in any room at any time and it didn’t. Instead…”

Rick interjected. “It made you fight.”

“Yeah.” A tired breath escaped her mouth.

“It was the same for me. I dealt with the two Tyrants before they could mutate further then the super Tyrant came into the picture and we ended up down there. It was fine until the turrets became active.”

“Do you… Do you think everything that has happened…. Is it because it got out of control?”

“You mean the leopard in the wild? I doubt—”

“No.” Angela gave him a shake of the head. “The scientists... All infected by the T-virus. All zombies but not through a bite, they were looking… whole. As if…. They had died of a stroke and just decomposed. The only way it would be possible is if they got infected either through injection, food or… air.”

The last possibility made her face pale. If that was the case then Angela may be infected. It probably was. There was no way the AI… an advanced program could have injected the T-virus to the researcher or poisoned their food. Releasing the viral agent into the air, however, was possible.

Rick noticed her horror and quickly reassured her. “This complex has been autonomous for more than a decade. They probably have a vaccine or at the very least an anti-viral on hand.”

It seemed to have cheered her up. “You’re right. That means we need to make a detour to the labs. What about the AI? Are we dealing with it first?”

“No. There isn’t much it can do to us beside releasing more experiments. I can destroy walls so it can’t lock us inside the room. The vaccine is a more important priority so it comes first.”

Giving Rick a nod, Angela stood up and handed him his Winchester and the few spare bullets she had left. He took everything gladly.

“I’m definitely taking a .357 caliber at the minimum from now on.” She announced. “The .45 does the job for most things and the P90 is really good at suppressing fire but the big ones like this bear? It’s not enough.”

“I agree.” Rick loaded a bullet inside his rifle. “I’ve been wondering about it since the beginning of the year. They’re being made tougher and regular caliber takes too many shots to deal with them. My .45 was useless against the Tyrants and my shotgun was barely useful.”

Stepping through the door of the room they heard screeches from deeper into the area. Angela recognized it as coming from Eliminators. Not wanting to be confronted with those particularly nasty monkeys again, she opened the way back to the Main Hall.

They didn’t dawdle and immediately went North towards the labs. So far it was the smallest area of the complex. There were two big rooms. One on each side of the corridor. One was for the development of the BOW and their growth, the other was purely for viral work, with computers, machines and microscopes everywhere.

It was the latter which interested them.

A few vials of T-virus and double doses of anti-viral agent were stored at cold temperature. Not thinking twice about it, Angela grabbed one vial while Rick searched for a syringe. He quickly found a few in the other room. After filling it, he looked intently at Angela.

She didn’t bother to roll up a sleeve and instead titled her head to the side to give Rick a better access to her naked neck. “Let’s get it over with.”

He didn’t hesitate. The injector was put against her skin and he pushed the button at the bottom of him. The needle pricked Angela’s skin deep enough to reach a small vein and began injecting the anti-viral. She didn’t so much as flinch or wince at the sudden sharp pain.

“No kiss to make it better?” She joked when Rick removed the injector and discarded it on one of the work tables. The blank look he gave her, made her blush in embarrassment. “Right, we’re on the job, not the time for jo—”

Words failed her when Rick suddenly leaned down and kissed her neck. It was a peck. It didn’t even last a second but it was a kiss nonetheless. It took a moment for Angela to realize that what had just happened, was real. So far Rick had been no-nonsocial on the job. Always focused on the matter at hand and there was no time for frivolity.

Her blush intensified from how intimate but also how huge Rick’s action was. It was certainly unexpected and despite how much she wanted to talk about this, she knew he would entertain her with an answer. Already Rick was back to being the pro she knew him as, finding a small container to secure what was left of the anti-viral agent.

Exiting the room, they went straight to the AI core. It wasn’t surprising when they found the door sealed. It didn’t matter much. Rick repeatedly pounded on it so hard with its fists that it bent. A few more blows and he was able to grab the door through the gap he created and pulled so hard it bent it some more. Enough for them to walk inside.

Angela noticed the blood on the floor and his hands. A result from hitting thick metal “Doesn’t it hurt?”

“It does, I’m just used to it. The pain will go away soon enough.”

Already she could see the bones and flesh mending. She didn’t envy him. Super strength but not the toughness to handle it perfectly. It wasn’t something she wanted.

“Huh.”

“What is it?” Angela stepped into the room right behind him and questioned what he had seen. The sudden drop in temperature was ignored.

“It’s… fried?”

The word didn’t compute for her. “Fried?” She stepped aside from behind his frame to have a better look.

“I think?”

Two rows of five columns were displayed in front of them. It was the first time for Angela to witness anything like this. She didn’t know much about computers but she knew enough to know that a red light meant offline. And there were many. Some didn’t even have a light. The faint scent of smoke permeated the air around the columns.

“It’s old tech… early to mid nineties old tech.” Rick could tell after having a better look.

“So… What?” Angela was clueless and she didn’t like that. “It… overheated?”

Pulling out a server who didn’t have a red light, Rick observed carefully. “More or less? The more calculations a computer does the more… Let’s just say it creates a lot of heat. Up to a hundred degrees celsuis… sometimes more. That’s why,” He pointed at the pipes all around them on the walls. “There is a whole cooling system. Sometimes it’s not enough however and the heat damages the components while the program can’t keep up with the calculations. This is the result. I think that it left you alone because it needed more processing power.”

“But for what?”

Rick pointed at a monitor to the side of the room. “Let’s find out.”

And find out they did.

The AI had originally been developed to assist the scientist in documenting every experiment that went down here but also with their day to day life. With time and with Umbrella being gone, they had less funding and the scientists decided to reprogram the AI to be able to do more to help. They were both desperate and lazy and it backfired badly.

Angela couldn’t believe what she was reading over Rick’s shoulder. “So the AI wanted to do more tests, the leopard in the wild not being enough and after one too many refusal, created a malfunction when dealing with the T-Virus, releasing it in the air and infecting everyone to make them the test subjects. Talk about irony.”

“And that’s why you do complex things yourself and not use AI. I can’t believe it fried because it couldn’t handle…”

“You?” Angela had an amused smile on her face. In truth, she wanted to laugh. The AI had found Rick to be the most fascinating subject, and tried to analyze it. The years of data accumulated and never dealt with and the insane amount of data Rick’s abilities provided had simply overloaded the AI. It indeed left Angela alone to focus on Rick more but even that had not been enough. It may have survived had it not decided to do the analysis in real time of the data it got.

“Apparently. I would laugh if not for the shit it put us through.”

“I would too. What now though? Can you open the entrance doors?”

“Hmm…” Rick typed on the keyboard for a bit and Angela saw multiple windows and files being opened and closed. One of them finally stayed. It was titled ‘Lock Down Protocol’. “I can.”

The red tint of the window changed to green. An universal change of color indicating things were alright or in this case opened. It didn’t last, however. Rick activated it again.

“Why?” Angela frowned.

“There may still be BOW at large in the facility. We can’t really give them the possibility to get out.”

“It’s an elevator, I doubt… Oh!” She finally realized the problem. “Lickers, giant spiders… and who knows what else can crawl on walls and ceilings.”

“Exactly. Let me just see if… Yes, I can remotely access every door one by one.”

Straightening up, Angela checked her shotgun. “Then we put down all of those out of a room then leave. I’m done with that place.”

“So am I, so am I.”

Rick used the mouse cursor to lock doors right after another, in silence. Already he was thinking of getting back to his room to take a very hot shower and let himself fall on his bed for some sleep.