Chương 10: Chapter 6 - Kill The Husband To Steal The Bride?

"Hello?"

The unknown guy at the corner of the room spoke. Everyone frowned, it was stupid to butt into a conversation when the atmosphere was this tense.

For speaking, the guy was rewarded with a tackle and a couple of kicks from Rain.

Alice, who was standing near him, just stepped aside clearly demonstrating their unfamiliarity for everyone to witness.

"Who are you?" Rain questioned, kicking the guy in the butt.

Truly, Rain was a bit eager to burn off some steam from Zeel's earlier misconduct. The loss of comrades didn't affect the group much, but the disrespect was what bothered Rain the most.

"Move!" The guy named Matt yelled "Don't touch me! Stop!"

Matt yelled, attempting to get Rain to relent but she was as ruthless as they came. The more he struggled, the more Rain twisted Matt's arm.

"Get away from me!" Matt said desperately trying to get away.

Rain was ruthless but nobody intended to help Matt. He was the only uncertain variable in this entire mess. Nobody could positively say who Matt was.

"Kaplan!" James said as he signaled Kaplan to run a scan or whatever else was necessary to identify Matt.

However, Alice was not someone to just standby when others were suffering. She attempted to step forward and intervene in Matt's situation but Zeel stepped forward.

"What are you doing?" Alice said eyeing Zeel suspiciously.

She felt that Zeel was somewhat familiar to her, but she was also extremely wary of him at the same time.

However, Zeel preferred to tread carefully at the moment.

Even with his identity cleared by Kaplan, Zeel noticed that James still doubted his intentions.

James always had his finger on the trigger, ready to shoot at a moment's notice.

The sign of a good leader was to remain ever cautious in the face of uncertainty.

"I'm a cop! I told you, I'm a cop! You're breaking my arm!" Matt said.

He was trying to convince everyone that he was security assigned to the mansion.

Zeel sighed since Matt clearly had no experience lying, everyone could tell that he was spouting Bullshit.

Trying to lie to trained soldiers, who were taught to assume everything was a lie, was just stupid. Zeel judged that Matt was definitely dropped many times as a child.

Matt's situation was determined but James still decided to bring him along. It was better to be extra certain in these sensitive matters.

While Zeel was minding his own business, James made his way towards Alice.

Zeel watched as James made his way over to Alice, and for a brief moment, Zeel considered killing him for just being near her – an action that would no doubt be considered illogical.

'It seems this faint feeling of love towards her could become problematic. Should I kill everyone here since it seems no one else is coming?' Zeel thought as he feared that his feelings towards Alice would hinder the progress of his mission.

"Report?" James said to Alice looking her dead in the eyes.

Alice seemed confused, and Zeel seemed instantly irritated with the authoritative tone in Jame's voice.

Zeel quickly shook his head, it was appalling how quickly anything concerning Alice earned his ire.

"Report now!" James repeated with a bit more force in his voice this time.

"What?" Alice replied looking confusedly and chillingly at James.

"I want your report, soldier," James specified seeing the confusion in Alice's eyes.

"There is a nerve gas compound in the air, I am guessing it's messing with people's short-term memory, so relax a little," Zeel said.

He was finding it difficult to control himself so he hinted at the issue.

"Sir, he's right. The house's primary defenses have been activated. She's probably still suffering the side effects," Rain reported after checking the consoles embedded in the walls.

"What are you going to do with us?" asked Matt a bit nervous at hearing the answer.

To be honest, Zeel was more of the idea to kill the extra baggage off but it would seem James was more of a cautious type of leader.

Even if Matt was lying that didn't mean that extra info could not be extracted later.

"What about the cop? Matthew Addison. He is not in the records but could be a mix-up or something?" Kaplan asked clearly not wanting to kill anyone.

"We take him with us until we are sure of who it is we are dealing with! Let's go" James said looking directly at Zeel, the cautiousness in his eyes not fading one bit.

"Prep for entry to the Hive," James said as the group: James, Kaplan, Rain, Alice, Matt, and Zeel made their way deeper into the mansion.

The further they walked, the more Zeel was impressed by the hidden mechanisms. It seemed that not killing everyone was the right move.

James ordered a basic defensive formation while they were heading down the stairs.

Zeel was placed at the front since he was the biggest threat there. It meant that should anyone die, it would be Zeel first.

Zeel understood their need to take extra precautions, had he not had such a keen intuition working for him, he probably would have already fled.

Zeel's intuition was somewhat acting up the closer he came to the entrance of The Hive.

Reaching the bottom, the group could see crates upon crates containing cases of what could only be fragile chemical compounds. Zeel, unlike the others, was not just an observer.

Whenever he passed by a crate, he would pop them open and look for necessary materials and compounds.

He had stashed some back-up equipment near the outskirts of Racoon city a couple of weeks ago, but it was always better to have more.

"I still need to find someplace where they conduct their artificial tissue research, that's where the greatest amount of specialized liquid mercury will be," Zeel said to himself as he has the habit of voicing out his plans to make sure they sound logical.

James led the way through the maze of crates.

Soon, a series of tracks appear, alongside what seemed to be an underground railway. When the group reached the train, Zeel noticed the problem immediately.

"I don't see how you're gonna travel without power unless you're gonna make the female Gorilla push it?" Zeel said obviously teasing Rain since she was a bit too tomboyish.

People like her would be on his list of those to eliminate since she presented unpredictability into the equation.

Zeel was not kidding, Homo-Superiors literally had an equation to calculated survivability in dangerous situations. Rain simply did not fit into the criteria of the equation.

Zeel glanced over the team and immediately knew how to exploit everyone effectively.

James was a cool-headed leader who liked to play it safe and hence was easily manipulated. Kaplan is just a coward who is good with computers, and Matt… well, Matt is here in case anyone requires a frame job or sacrificial pawn.

"Fix it!" James said to no one in particular, but Rain still stepped forward grumbling to herself since she really wanted to shoot Zeel for his snide comment earlier.

Kaplan went to the side as he tried and failed many times to unlock the side door that seemed to be jammed.

"You got a problem? How's that door?" asked Rain after she was finished making repairs to the train.

"It's sealed shut," Kaplan replied still struggling.

Kaplan struggled intensely to open the door since having Rain open the door would be a very emasculating experience.

"Let me," Rain said pushing him out of the way, easily opening the door and jumping back when a seemingly dead body fell out of the space inside.

Zeel was not surprised at the man inside the compartment. He could hear the weak heartbeat from far away, so he used this time to communicate with Alice.

Every move of Alice's captivated him to no end, and Zeel actively indulged in the feeling he was experiencing. It was sweet, but also a bit sour.

Zeel had dated many species before so his concepts of courting were different from the people of this world.

Zeel was not sure which mating experience to use on Alice, but he could narrow it down to either socialization or spanking her butt.

At least that was the way Zeel's father taught him to court primitive female species.

While talking to Alice, Zeel didn't once look at her, how was he to know that lack of eye contact when courting could make a woman feel subconsciously unattractive?

Since the 40th century, humans in Zeel's world had ceased normal methods of dating.

Appearance, voice, and even gender could be changed at will – even sex became a process of both physical and mental exertion, meaning you would perform sex in both reality and the mindscape to enhance the stimulus.

When Alice dismissed him, Zeel turned to look at the man that almost fell onto Rain. The man who fell through was identified as Spencer by Kaplan, who ran his prints through the Umbrella mainframe.

Since Zeel had previously killed the medic, Rain was forced to perform the check-up and asked basic questions to which all answers were 'I don't know'.

While everyone was busy obsessing over Spencer, Zeel proceeded to check the bag he collapsed with.

Zeel's watch had picked up liquid mercury variants inside the bag.

Inside the bag, Zeel found a silver case. A quick scan revealed several vials of serums that were highly concentrated with Mercury-Variant.

He considered submitting his finding to James but the enormous amounts of mercury-variants could not be wasted. He required even more to activate his nanites.

Zeel strapped the case on his back, an action that was noticed by everyone but nobody mentioned anything in particular since they considered Zeel having a different mission from themselves since the beginning.

They all reasoned that Zeel's mission was related to the bag he picked up.

After Kaplan did a second check of the route, making sure they were keeping up with their estimated time limit, James gave the approval for the train to start moving.

It was only a couple of minutes later they arrived at the entrance to The Hive.

Walking down the corridors, Zeel was the first to speak "It's too quiet. My hearing is much better than all of yours, and it is too quiet for an Umbrella Facility. And..."

"And what you're scared?" Rain mocked, hoping to get back at Zeel for his earlier teasing.

Zeel shrugged and said "Maybe I am, but I hear nibbling sounds. Too loud to be rats but I guess I can be mistaken,"

Without his nanites, Zeel could not immediately distinguish sound frequencies. He could hear water dripping in the bathroom and mistake it for rushing water, so he was not the most dependable at this time.

After a couple more seconds of walking alongside Zeel, Alice looked at Spencer from time to time as if she was attempting to recall something.

This action was, of course, noticed by everyone present, leading Rain to mock Zeel about his lack of 'game'.

What that was, Zeel had no idea.

"Listen to me. I want to know who you people are... and I want to know what's going on here. Now!" Alice demanded, seemingly fed up about her amnesia status and the lack of information being circulated.

James, being the leader, opted to respond as he was growing increasingly annoyed at Alice's questions "You and I have the same employer. We all work for the Umbrella Corporation. The mansion above us is an emergency entrance to the Hive. You are security operatives placed there to protect that entrance,"

"What about this?" She asked pointing to her wedding ring as a brief memory of being married flickered across her subconscious.

"Your marriage is fake. Just part of your cover," James replied to which Zeel heaved a sigh of relief loud enough for everyone to hear.

It would be distasteful to kill a woman's husband because you were trying to court her.

Alice was also noticeably relieved but Spencer – her fake husband, did not take the information kindly.