Resident Evil: Hell Rising

Chapter 20: The Rift

Pain was the last thing Charlie remembered before everything went dark on her. Well, pain and...her girlfriend screaming her name.

"CHARLIE!"

The echoing sound of Vaggie's voice made Charlie jolt away and found it hard to move. She couldn't speak because of some kind mask hooked up to her face. In fact, dozens of things seemed hooked up to her, some of which were most invading. But as she did her best to keep her eyes opened, she looked around and found herself underwater, with dozens of tubes and cables seeming to wrap themselves around her. Clamps were around her arms, legs, waist, neck, hooked up to back of whatever she was in at the moment. But it couldn't hold her so easily, as she began to muster up enough demonic strength to break free. Her eyes went fully red and her horns appear as she began to struggle frantically before she could feel the clamps begin to give out, as she practically pried them off the back. Then, she focused on the glass in front of her and started to punch at it fast and hard, faster than anyone could punch underwater. Soon enough, she began to leave cracks until the whole glass cover broke apart and she was washed out of the thing she was held in.

Recovering as quickly as she could, the Princess of Hell, sits up and removes the oxygen mask around her face, along with any other tubes or wires wrapped around her. All except for one thing, directly attached to the center of her. It was in the same shape of some kind of insect, a scarab, with a red armored, yet transparent plate on the front of it, showing some kind of liquid and power core inside. Charlie tried to removed it, but the moment she pulled on it, she screamed in pain. Any attempt for her to rip it off caused her great pain, so she decided to leave it alone for now.

"Where...am I?" She pants, looking around to see that she was in a lab of some sort and what she just broke out of was a capsule. Standing up, Charlie gathers herself...and finally notices that she wasn't wearing anything, having been naked when she was in the capsule. "Eep! Clothes!" Looking around, there looked to be only one thing for her to wear. A red, one-piece jumpsuit with heels fitted at the legs, and it seemed to fit perfectly around her body, as she slips into it and zips it up.

"Not what I'm used to wearing, but it'll have to do for now." She also puts on a pair of foreleg holsters that were for some semi-automatic handguns that were alongside the suit. "Why would they leave these here? Forget it, I need to find a way out."

Automatic doors open for her to leave the lab as she finds herself in a some kind of dimly building, where her only source of light were those on the floor. As she slowly moved into a hallway at her right, she kept a gun in case she ran into anything that would keep her from leaving. Never in her life had Charlie experienced this much silence, and it was intensifying as the click of her heels echoed throughout the halls. As she continued, there were windows at both sides of the hall, showing glimpses of other laboratories within this place, one of which seeming to be overtaken by plant life that looked parasitic and mutated. Others simply showed labs with chemicals in them...along with stains of blood all over the walls and tables. Upon reaching the end of the hall, another door opened for Charlie, who then found herself walking on a bridge over an abyss.

"Whoa." She said. "Okay, don't look down." As she crossed the bridge, she could see power conduits running along the walls, going off for miles as she reaches the next door. Upon reaching the next area, it appeared to be a lobby of some sort, with the logo of who this place belonged to.

"...Umbrella? Isn't that the company that was behind the deaths of Steve and the S.T.A.R.S? Are they behind all this?"

It was then that she heard some screaming and turned to a door at the side and immediately thought "Welp, definitely not going down there. Time to leave." However, the door that seemed to be the exit wasn't opening for her. She tried to shooting at it, but that didn't work. "Oh, come on!" She was about to tap into her demonic powers...when the door just seemed to open on its own. It made her sigh at her waisted effort and ammunition. "This place is so unfair." Then, she decides to move on. Upon reaching the next room, what she saw next was...horrifying. Directly below her looked to have been large transparent cubes, each of them holding what appeared to be monsters that Charlie and the others have yet to face inside, and they were strapped down and were looking to be experimented on as machines with buzzsaws, probes and other medical equipment were hanging by the top of the cubes. Charlie slowly walked overhead on the bridge, continuing to see what was happening to each of these mutations. And that's when she began to see...familiar faces amongst those experiments.