At some point, my creations literally swarmed over her body, and all movement ceased.
Had they actually won?
Kate and I exchanged a glance, understanding each other without words. We waited another ten seconds, then cautiously jumped down.
To be precise, I jumped down with the burden on my shoulders, while it remained uncertain whether the girl could descend without injury—and for now, it was best not to risk any, better to stay fully combat-ready.
The moment we landed, the blood of the infected Trevor had killed began to stream toward me. I will never get used to the sight of blood moving of its own accord in my direction. Perhaps that must be why I failed to notice how, from within the tangled heap of ghoul bodies that had buried Trevor beneath them and pinned her in place, a pair of eyes fixed on me through a narrow gap.
For the first time in all this ordeal, the loneliness, confusion, and pain in them were joined by a new companion: malice.
From that same opening, after skewering a couple of obstructing bodies, three of Lisa's tentacles shot toward me.
I sensed something was wrong only when they were already nearly upon me, and it's not certain that I would have managed to jump out of the way, since the speed of her tentacles was anything but slow, if not for one factor the monster hadn't accounted for…
"Cain!"
I was literally shoved out of the path of the incoming strike. Unlike me, Kate hadn't been distracted by the blood flowing toward me; she had kept her eyes on the writhing mass. She didn't have the speed to yank me clear in time—but she had enough to slam into me and knock me aside.
I flew back half a meter, digging my feet into the ground to brake, churning up the soil beneath me. My strength allowed for far greater feats than that. But I had no time for self-admiration; with surprise and a measure of fear—or better said, shock—I stared at Kate's body, pierced in three places: head, heart, and the center of her abdomenher spine practically shattered in two.
Beyond revival, I noted distantly.
Only when the blood of the now definitively dead girl began to draw toward me did the full weight of what had happened finally sink in.
Well now. There's irony for you. Me—who had undergone multiple evolutions, who had killed Birkin, who had absorbed the knowledge of a powerful fighter even before that—saved by my weakest experiment.
There was something bitterly ironic about it.
But I could reflect on that later.
Right now—
I wanted revenge on the one who had killed my creation. My fledgling!
Something inside me snapped—"the clamp dropped," I think that's what the state is called. With a roar, I lunged forward, forgetting about my pistol, my knives, even my hand-to-hand training.
I seized one of Trevor's tentacles and yanked it toward me, partially dragging her from the heap. With my other clawed hand, I struck at her face, fingers spread wide, ignoring the fact that as my swing dipped lower, my claws sheared through one of the ghouls' arms at the shoulder.
Without finishing that strike—though it tore through my opponent's face and scraped against bone—I shifted in one fluid motion. Curling my palm into a blade-like shape, I drove it forward, first punching straight through the unfortunate ghoul I had just maimed, then plunging into Trevor's abdomen.
And then it hit me… If the previous portion of my opponent's blood hadn't yet fully absorbed into me, now I began drinking directly—through the pores of my skin—from the arm still embedded inside Trevor's body. And I saw something that cooled my rage.
Yes, a monster stood before me, and the age of her body was comparable to my own. But the fragment of consciousness that had survived all those horrific experiments—experiments I was now witnessing firsthand through her blood—and the tortures inflicted by Umbrella's scientists, including the Birkin couple, may they burn forever on the coals with the frying pan never running out of oil!
That fragment was not a monster.
Nor a grown woman.
No.
It was still that little girl who would never again see her father or mother again. Especially her mother—the one she had searched for even back in the mansion, when the S.T.A.R.S. team arrived, ignoring bullets and every assault against her.
A small, terrified child.
And at last, after what felt like an eternity of alien torment and suffering, I opened my eyes.
No trace of rage remained in my gaze as I looked at Trevor, very much alive, who had just used her newly freed arms and tentacles to fling aside the remaining ghouls, finishing off nearly all of them.
I leapt back, unwilling to leave myself open to another strike.
(End of Chapter)
🙌Bonus chapter for 50 power stones!
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