The 0714 Files: File #1 Inferno (Remake 2)

Chapter 52

I gawk out the glass windows into the greenhouse beyond. Those things that cornered Claire are pounding against them to get in. They climbed up from the walkway where they cling to the wall, having spotted me the second she disappeared from their sight, wanting to get to me now. One is still at the door where I'd left it.

With my hands pressed into the counter in front of me, all I can do is watch them to make sure they don't somehow break through or slip out of sight to find some other way in. Especially since there are busted-out vents in the previous room. I tore the lab benches apart, went through every drawer in them, and scanned around the control panel in front of the windows for a possible passcode. There was nothing, our only hope is Claire finds something in the new location she ran into. I don't know why I told her to go. It should be me who barrels into danger, not her. She has a brother to look for after this, and Sherry too...

In the center of the counter is the cartridge we need. I'd accidentally triggered a dispersal of whatever solution was in it a few minutes ago. Nothing came from using it, the plants are still walking and the cartridge was released with nothing left inside.

Unashamedly for the first time, I admit to myself that I honestly wish Leon was here. Uncaring of the danger it means for him, uncaring of the confusion those feelings cause just like in the sewers. Just like while I was carrying Sherry from the cable car. Maybe he would've handled it all better than I did, or at the very least... I would've felt safer with him. There I go with having that feeling again and I still don't understand it.

There are five bodies against the wall ahead of me, I counted. One of them choses then to pry open its hideously deformed skull. Smacking its face into the glass, grinding the sharp teeth greedily against it. Spraying some kind of milky fluid from its throat, it dribbles down the algae-covered window. Noticeably melting away at the algae and leaving a clear trail. It must be some kind of digestive acid it's puking up... Jesus. I can't imagine that getting used on any part of my body. Another croaks an eerie noise from its throat, and goosebumps fan across my entire body in response. The cold chill in the stale room doesn't help either.

Five were at the window in total with one in the door, who knows how many are beyond that. I'd been so focused on them, the adrenaline in my body at the sight of them, and waiting for a call from Claire in the near pitch-black room that I hadn't spotted anything in my searching that can at least stun them. Maybe fire, but I don't have anything on me to produce something like that.

Gritting my teeth, I sneer in their direction. If I only had my damn shotgun... but then I'd fired a bullet directly into the one's head on the stairs and the most I'd managed to do is piss the thing off. Perhaps a shotgun won't do much either, who knows what these things are capable of. Looks like Plant 43 had done something to them. Probably infected them, and that's why they look like plant creatures.

Suddenly I'm reminded of entering the gallery in the mansion's residence hall. What it was a gallery for, we'll never know because...

The room smells foul. Rotten and putrid, and any other word that can describe decay. It makes me sick, and I almost gag in response. Until Jill and I look up in utter abhorrence to a chandelier-like mass of roots and tubes hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. Thick, large tentacles swish around as if it's sentient and searching for anything in reach while a bulb opens suddenly. Dripping liquid onto a rotted-out floorboard below.

Fighting that plant in the mansion had been a nightmare. Not necessarily because it was difficult. A hit or two from Forest's grenade launcher blasted it apart with ease. It was the state of the room, the smell of mold and decay from months of abandonment. It was the sight of half decomposed bodies of the scientists captured by it months prior, all thrown into a corner to be forgotten. That's what stayed with me. Sometimes I can still smell the decay of certain rooms in the mansion. It never goes away, the comment I made to Claire over it was an unfortunate promise.