Best of Intentions: In Too Deep (ch. 22)

Hot water flowed over me, washing off what felt like gallons of sweat, smoke, blood, and grime. The water had flowed black at my feet from the gunk that had gathered on me over the course of the single longest day in history, and it had long since cleared up. The hotel water pumps had plenty of water, and given that I was the only occupant, all that hot water was reserved for me. I could probably spend days in the steam-filled bathroom if I wanted. And I kinda wanted to. 

I hadn't realized how exhausted I was. From the moment that I woke up, it was nothing but chaos -- just one thing after another with the margin for error being damn near nonexistent throughout. I had been hunted by several bio-weapons, nearly got assassinated, killed people, and led a horde of zombies through the streets… all of it flowed into each other in a sequence of events that hadn't let me catch my breath until now. 

It had been about an hour since Dakka sacrificed herself to put down the Nemesis kaiju for good. An hour since the evacuation began in a mad rush before anything else could go wrong. I had quickly vanished from the spotlight, knowing what came next. I'm sure the President’s hand had been hovering over the big red button to nuke the place, and I imagine he was very alarmed to learn of my ‘railgun’ that was less a railgun and more of a… ‘fuck everything in that direction’ gun. 

I'm sure that he was blowing up someone's phone to get in contact with me to demand answers. Or Umbrella was sniffing around, realizing that I had them beat in the super weapon department, and they had gained another reason to black bag or kill me. For that reason, I made myself scarce. I vanished inside of the city, hiding out until I could get a feel for what the reaction was going to be. I’d never exactly trusted the government in the first place, and I especially didn't trust Resident Evil’s downright caricature of a government.

The President and Congress were morons at the best of times. In Resident Evil? It was a miracle that they could speak without drooling on themselves. 

My mind wandered, turning over the events of the day from beginning to end. Every single mistake and close call stood out to me, glaringly obvious with the awesome power of hindsight. Decisions that I should have made then only revealed themselves now. Things that I should have anticipated were missed and caught me off guard. There were a thousand and one little things that I could have done differently that could have changed everything. 

And the most glaring one of all was… 

“I'm a damn coward,” I sighed to myself, looking inward to feel the final level up that awaited within me. Level 20. I had been playing DnD for years, and I never once hit what was considered ‘max level’ simply because the characters had so many options available to them that the game became a slog to get through. 

Level 20 for an Artificer… honestly, it was kinda trash for me. Soul of Artifice -- a +1 to saving throws for all the magic items that I was attuned to was good in a tabletop setting, less so in real life when there was no DM to tell me to make a saving throw. And being able to cheat death by sacrificing a magical item that I was attuned to was useful in some situations, but if I had managed to reach 0 hp as a Level 20 Artificer when I was attuned to an Amulet of Health… 

Worse was that I didn't gain spell slots, new spells, infusions, or attunement slots. 

A heaving sigh escaped me as I mushed my dark hair out of my face and turned my head upward towards the nozzle. If I had just started grinding levels earlier, then I would have had a lot more options available to me right at the start when they mattered the most. But I hadn't. I was scared, so I stayed where it was safe. I made pamphlets and business cards and I told myself I was doing everything that I could to forestall the end of the world. 

I turned off the shower and stepped out, grabbing a fluffy towel first, then a fuzzy bathrobe since my clothing was only fit for burning by this point. Stepping out of the bathroom, my bland hotel room went ignored as I headed for the window. And, it was then that I saw the streak of absolute devastation that Dakka and Kaboom had inflicted across the city. It was a straight line of buildings collapsing, concrete and metal liquifying, that punched through everything in its path. Fires burned from where some buildings were ignited, and buzzing above were the military helicopters that had finally decided that they should actually do something. 

Zombies they could apparently ignore. Giant kaiju? They left us to handle it. But super weapons? That was worth mobilizing the troops for, evidently. From my vantage, I could see them moving in from the periphery of the city. Squads of marines sweeping from building to building, street by street, killing every zombie that they saw. Meanwhile, my red zones were being mopped up by troops that were dropped by the helicopters, and I could hear the continuous echoes of gunfire in the distance. 

The evacuation was under way. I'm sure that the panic hadn't subsided, but the strong arm of the military would keep things in line while everyone was scanned and tested for the T-Virus before being sent on to a quarantine zone in Knoxville. Provided that the US government didn't manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the situation was at long last… under control. 

I let the curtain fall into place, and I walked to the edge of a too soft bed. My lips thinned, and I felt something welling up in my chest, but I couldn't quite swallow it down. I tried though. I had been doing it since I found myself here -- swallowing down whatever emotion that tried to overwhelm me and stop me from doing what needed to get done. Only now… 

The job was done. Raccoon City wasn’t saved yet, but the rest of the job was out of my hands. I could finally sit down and…

My eyes stung, and I found my vision was blurring as I looked down at my hands. I had torn them to shreds in my frenzied efforts to kill Nemesis. Only scars remained after a Healing Word sourced from my Spell Refueling Ring. I breathed in deeply, trying to swallow down the surge of emotions once more, but I found a lump was lodged in my throat. My hands rose to my face, and I whispered the truth. “I was scared.”

Like a crack in a dam, the truth spilled out of me. “I was scared the entire time.” A shuddering breath escaped me. Since the moment that I arrived, I was in over my head. I was a normal, unassuming guy who had power I never wanted thrust into my hands and the weight of the world tossed on my shoulders. The idea that the survival of the human race hinged on me and my actions was terrifying. 

Terrifying in a way that I could never hope to describe. It was the kind of fear that made your legs lock up, your blood freeze in your veins, and petrified you to the point you couldn’t even breathe. For weeks, I’d wanted to scream and cry and shake my fist at the sky for putting me in this situation, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not when so much was at stake. 

So, I swallowed every ounce of fear, horror, and terror that I felt. I told myself that I could break down when the job was done, but not a second before. 

The job was done, now. 

It felt pathetic as my muffled sobs and hitching breath filled the hotel room. It felt so… weak. Unnecessary. Performatory almost, even though only Kaboom was here to bear witness. There were better things that I could be doing with my time, I knew even as every emotion that I had swallowed down bubbled up to the surface. The government was going to be hunting for me. I needed to escape the city before they closed in. 

And it wasn’t like Umbrella was defeated. By now, they would realize that the cat was out of the bag. We had overwhelming evidence of their participation in the near apocalypse. The ‘smart’ ones that managed to climb high up the corporate ladder would scatter like a bunch of rats, knowing that the jig was up. And they’d take whatever resources they could with them, turning one big problem into a hundred smaller ones. 

I could be planning my next moves. I should be doing the legwork to hunt them down, to unravel the web of lies Umbrella had built its foundations on, and I… 

There were a lot of things that I should be doing, but I found that I didn't have the will to do them. The decompression that had patiently waited for this moment wasn't going to stop until I sobbed out every last tear and was the emotional equivalent of a wrung out dish rag.

Which is why I flinched like a bomb had gone off when I heard a knock at the door. “Rude? It's Jill,” Jill called out from behind the door and Kaboom acted instantly, peeking from underneath the door frame to confirm that it was Jill. “I brought some clothes for you.” 

I forced myself to take a steadying breath, blowing my nose sharply while I fiercely rubbed my eyes. “Just a second,” I said, snatching up my glasses and giving myself a quick inspection in the mirror. Maybe I could pretend that I had just woken from a nap? It wasn't like I was dead tired. 

Opening the door, I saw Jill. Like me, she had also found another outfit -- form-fitting blue jeans, a white blouse shirt under a leather jacket with a black hat. She held up the goodie bag and our eyes met. The second lasted longer than it should have, honestly. And I'd like to say that it was just my mind playing tricks on me, but when her eyes immediately softened, I felt… 

Vulnerable. 

“I forgot that you weren't trained for any of this,” Jill said more to herself than to me, I think. She saw right through me before I could give an excuse. “You're… just some guy sprung from Umbrella's lab,” she continued, cutting right to the heart of the matter. “I should have seen that.” 

“I'm fine,” I said a little too hastily to be true. 

Jill looked at me for a moment more before replying with a gentle voice, “I'm not.” She confessed, and… I'm not sure why that surprised me, but it really shouldn't have. “I'm dead on my feet, and I still can't bring myself to fall asleep because, somehow, I know the nightmares are going to be worse than the past couple of days. Despite feeling like I have just lived through my worst one.” 

I wasn't sure what to say. I knew about her nightmares thanks to the cold open of the third game, and as much as she tried to hide it, I knew that she carried a weight on her shoulders from the disaster that was the Mansion. So, instead of talking, I held the door open a hit wider and gestured her to come in. She offered a thin smile before doing so and I closed the door behind her. 

I lingered at the door, trying to get my thoughts in order as I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I nearly left Raccoon City,” I half blurted as Jill set the bag of clothes on the bed and took a seat on it. She turned around and she didn't seem surprised. “No. It would be more accurate to say that I did leave it. I knew what was coming, so I left. It was just that the path I took led me right by a city park.” 

The initial hours after my abrupt and unexpected arrival were filled with panic and confusion. The moment that I recognized the Umbrella logo, that panic intensified a thousand times over because I understood how deranged and stupid the company was as it destroyed the world for the sake of ruling over the ashes. Even with my power, the idea of fighting such an entrenched global conglomerate felt like an impossible task. 

So, I tried to leave. I tried to cut and run. I was going to find an isolated plot of land, build a bunker, and I didn't plan on leaving it until the world unfucked itself. 

“Yeah, that'd have been the smart move,” Jill acknowledged. “What made you stay?” 

I saw a bunch of kids in the jungle gym, playing king of the castle. A class of elementary students, I think. The realization that they would all die during the disaster in Raccoon City, or in the ensuing apocalypse… It felt like someone had ripped my heart out through a hole in my stomach. The idea that I was the one person that could save their lives had been a realization that filled me with dread. So much so that it stopped me dead in my tracks. “Didn't fancy living the rest of my life in a bunker,” I lied. 

Jill clearly didn't believe me, but she didn't call me out on the lie. Instead, she gestured to sit next to her. Leaving Kaboom on guard, I crossed the room and sat on the corner of the bed. “I was in the military,” Jill informed, and I cocked my head at the information. I hadn't known that. “Just for a bit. Got recruited into Delta Force pretty much straight out of boot camp. It was about that time I realized I hated the military lifestyle, so I jumped ship to STARS as soon as I got the offer. It gave me the freedom that I was looking for. And the ability to lock up the bad guys who were guilty of crimes beyond being on the government's shit list.” 

Her lips thinned, “Chris is ex-military, too. Air-Force. High risk missions were his specialty. That, and punching out his superior officers.” Her jaw tightened and she glanced at me, “We were trained to deal with this kind of stuff. The whole situation going straight to hell, chaos all around, and death behind every corner. Bioweapons, evil mega corporations, and a near-apocalypse are beyond our scope and ability to deal with. You're not… you…” 

She took a breath and reached out, placing her hand on mine. “You stepped up to the plate, Rude. No one asked you to do it. You had every reason to run and save your own skin. But you didn't. You chose to stay. You risked your life over and over and over again, and you saved thousands of lives in Raccoon City. You might have even saved the whole damn world.” 

I took a steadying breath, hating the surge of emotions in my chest. Jill squeezed my hand, and I hated it all the more because I realized she noticed. 

“I took that for granted,” Jill confessed to me. “You always seemed to have a plan, and I relied on that. On you. Me, Chris, all the others -- we put that pressure on you when we should have been the ones to step up. But we didn't, and you had to shoulder the burden.” 

“I fucked up. A lot,” I admitted hoarsely. I made so many mistakes. Some of them were obvious in hindsight -- I shouldn't have trusted my metaknowledge as much as I did. Even if it still seemed utterly outlandish that the movies would make up an OC to star in the movie franchise, I should have known better than to trust a Hollywood blockbuster adaptation. I should have been more aggressive with leveling up in the early days rather than waiting last minute. 

I should have been more conscious of large gatherings, like the baseball game that had unleashed thousands of undead into the city in a wave that I hadn't been prepared for. I should have stayed when we had Nemesis pinned down the first time and made sure I finished the job. I should have realized that the infection was being transported through the water treatment plant. I should have made a more concentrated effort to hunt down and locate Umbrella assets active in the city. 

Any one of those things could have saved hundreds of lives. Thousands, even. 

But I missed them. I missed them because I was stuck flying by the seat of my pants with dwindling resources from one fire to the next. Reactive. I was entirely too reactive. 

“If that's what you call fucking up, then I don't want to see what you call a success,” Jill remarked, breaking me free from my spiraling thoughts. “You did good, Rude. Honestly, we did better than we have any right to expect, and it's entirely because of you. You led the charge every step of the way. And… that's enough.” 

My jaw clenched. “Enough?” I echoed, tilting my head at her. 

Jill looked at me with eyes full of empathy, “You did enough, Rude. You've given enough. You can leave the rest to us,” she offered, and I could tell that she wanted me to take the out. And it would be a bold-faced lie to say that there wasn't a part of me that wanted to. “Chris and the others… I don't know what comes next, but we can handle it. Umbrella is going down, and we're going to make sure that it's put down for good. Your part is done.” 

I took in a deep, slow breath, finding myself squeezing her hand in search of reassurance. It was so very tempting. I couldn't deny that. 

But I couldn't ever do it. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I tucked tail and ran. 

“No chance,” I flatly denied, swallowing the lump in my throat. Jill didn't seem surprised by my refusal, but she did seem disappointed. “I'm seeing this through to the end. Plus… someone else would get it wrong.” 

I felt calmer. 

I… actually felt calmer. I think I just needed to hear it. I needed to hear that I had the choice to walk away -- no judgment, no guilt trips. It was an option that I couldn’t imagine myself taking, not knowing what I knew and not when I could do the things that I could, but the fact that it was there… It meant that it was my choice. That I was choosing to put myself in extreme amounts of danger. That it was my decision to risk my life in the battles to come. 

It made me feel like I was in control, I think. I was absolutely in over my head, but the choice to be there was mine. 

“Are you sure?” Jill prompted, still giving me an out. 

I chuckled, “Hell no. But I’m doing it anyway,” I confirmed, giving her a single sharp nod. Her gaze searched my face for a moment more before she returned it, a little disappointed that I wasn’t doing the smart thing and cutting and running. 

A small sigh escaped her, “Well, that’s good. Might not have worked anyway, considering that the military is tearing up the city looking for you. You’d think you were the one responsible for the outbreak with how they’re shaking everyone down.” Yeah, that was no surprise. The US didn’t like the feeling of being outgunned. 

“Pft. I was planning on dodging the military from the very start,” I admitted. There was no way in hell that I was going to dodge getting black bagged by Umbrella just to fall into the hands of their puppet government. 

At that, Jill’s eyes narrowed. “Then you have a plan?” She asked me, and even as she said the words, she winced ever so slightly. I understood it. I would never, under any circumstances, ever describe myself as leadership material, but… well, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man was king. 

I pushed back my still-damp hair and cleared my throat. “Have any of you narced to Big Brother?” I asked, earning a sharply raised eyebrow. She didn’t remark on it, but I think it was a relief that I was acting more like myself. 

“Not yet,” Jill replied, and I let go of her hand. “We’re holding up in Midtown. We wanted to talk to you about what came next,” she admitted. “How serious were you when you talked about Umbrella subverting the government?”

“Very,” I responded, grabbing the bag of clothing and heading back into the bathroom to get dressed. Couldn’t fight the world’s premier superpower now that the Soviet Union had collapsed in a fuzzy bathrobe. Even if it was surprisingly comfortable. “Umbrella couldn’t make the kind of money that it needed to build two massive secret bases underneath the city without the powers that be wanting their product. They couldn’t get away with it without connections to make sure no questions were asked. The only person I’m sure that’s not in on it is the President.”

“What?” Jill blurted through the door, sounding genuinely caught off guard. “When did you talk to the President- who let you talk to the President?” Given how that conversation with the leader of the free world went, her reaction wasn’t uncalled for. 

“From the sounds of it, Umbrella was already in his crosshairs,” I continued, shrugging on a pair of blue jeans and a thermal long-sleeved shirt. “And we gave him a gun filled with silver bullets. I’m guessing most of Umbrella’s connections are going to cut their losses. No point in going down with the ship. Issue is -- Umbrella’s top brass is going to do the same, and that need for bio-weapons is going to be filled by someone.”

Jill was silent as I slipped into the boots and tied them off. “Annette mentioned Tricell,” she reminded. 

“I imagine that they’re going to scoop up as much data and personnel as they can when Umbrella goes under,” I agreed, opening the door, now dressed to face the world once more. To that end, I rolled up my sleeves and grabbed a backpack for Kaboom to crawl into. “Others are going to strike out. Go independent with whatever resources they can scrounge up.”

“Sounds about right,” Jill agreed. “This won’t end until we destroy every last sample of the T-Virus.”

It wouldn’t. And, honestly, I understood the fascination with the stuff. What the T-Virus was capable of… it was outright absurd. They grew a kaiju overnight, essentially. The clips and snippets I had seen when looking at wikis lacked context, but even those snippets had made it clear that the T-Virus was something that had immense potential if harnessed. The issue was that Umbrella was the very last people who should be harnessing that potential. Those morons wouldn’t call an experiment a success unless it killed half of them and made at least three halfway successful escape attempts. 

There was even a part of me that wanted to try my own hand at cultivating the substance. It was hardly like I could be any worse than Umbrella when it came to safety standards. But the idea itself seemed too dangerous and not worth the risks, regardless of the potential benefits. 

“Which we can’t trust the military to actually do,” Jill added. 

“No, we can’t,” I agreed, shouldering Kaboom. “It’s something we’re going to have to do ourselves.”

“How?” Jill asked sharply, standing up and to that, I just offered a cheeky smile. 

“It’ll be easier if we tell the others all at once,” I said, and that frustrated her, but she nodded with only a little annoyance. We both went for the door, and I lingered before opening it. “And Jill?” I started, catching her attention as I glanced over my shoulder. “Thank you.”

The words felt entirely inadequate to convey what I meant, but it got the message across. Jill offered a faint smile in response, offering only a slight nod of her head to show that she understood. I had been on the cusp of breaking down when she arrived, and if she hadn’t been here… I’d still be on the bed sobbing my heart out. 

I wasn’t okay. Not yet. But I found my sense of purpose once more, and with it, I stepped out the door to the next battle to be fought. 

…

I entered a run-down looking bar to find that a number of faces immediately zeroed in on me the moment that I stepped through the door. My gaze instantly zeroed in on Chris, seeing that he was speaking to Leon. Down the bar were Ada and Claire, and posted up at a table, I spotted Carlos and Kevin having their own private conversation. Counting me, that was eight of us. Which, frankly, put us way ahead of the curve. 

Jill followed behind me, leaning near the door with her arms crossed as she made sure that we weren’t followed. I took the moment to look around the room, my gaze lingering on some more than others. 

Carlos was a solid guy. Trustworthy despite his association with Umbrella. Kevin I knew less well, but both Chris and Jill seemed to trust him, and that was enough for me. Leon wasn’t someone I knew well, but he was one of the protagonists of the games. Chris was trustworthy, that went without saying. His sister less so, largely because I was leery of sibling betrayal plots, but given that Claire had helped me take down Nemesis she had earned herself the benefit of the doubt. 

The odd one out was Ada Wong. A supposed FBI agent, but I’m eighty percent sure that she was working with Albert Wesker, and that guy was a human sized douche. But that was a connection that I could use. After all, the moment that she connected who her real bosses were, that let me find them. 

“If you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself,” I said, grabbing a chair and taking a seat. “We have enough to bury Umbrella, but I’m sure it’s already shedding its skin to become something else so it can continue doing the same shit that they did here.” As I began, all turned to face me, listening intently. I really had no clue how I managed to put myself in charge of people who were vastly more qualified to lead than I, but… too late to complain, I guess. 

“Which is why I want to assemble a… team. An organization,” I continued, looking between them. “We won’t answer to anyone. Not any world government, company, or any moron in a position of power. So, odds are that we won’t be so much stomping on some powerful toes as dancing on them.”

“Not exactly a strong sales pitch,” Ada noted, her voice dryly sarcastic. She wasn’t wrong. 

“That’s just the opener. The truth of it is, odds are the good ol’ US of A will fear us as much as they do Umbrella,” I admitted. “Because I’ll be providing the tech that we'll use for one singular purpose -- to put Umbrella, no matter what form that it takes, in the dirt. I’ll provide the financing for the organization as well. We’ll expand until we have cells in every major nation, all hunting the same prey.”

Money was no concern. Even if I didn’t know of major financial upheavals, like the dot-com bubble that was about to burst, or the tech companies that were about to explode in value, or the products that were about to take off… to be blunt, if I couldn’t create a successful tech company as a Level 20 Artificer, then I needed to hang up the hat. 

There was a shift in the room at that, all of them realizing what that meant. I had, after all, created a WMD that had cut the city in half with what amounted to chewing gum, a paperclip, and spite. 

“This entire time, Umbrella has been one step ahead. They forced us to react to their inane bullshit and endless stupidity. That is going to change,” I continued, getting a feel for their reactions. Leon and Kevin looked a bit lost, but they were buying into it. Chris was nodding along, his expression grim and serious. Meanwhile, Ada wore an ambivalent mask that could go one way or the other. “For the next couple of months, we’ll lay low. We’ll prepare, we build, and we train.”

Time. Time was the single most important aspect of being an Artificer, and it was the one thing that I didn’t have during this disaster. I was forced to level up so quickly just to gain enough spell slots to survive long enough to fight the next fight. And, with no time, we had managed to pull miracles out of our collective asses again and again. We took the best that Umbrella could throw at us and spat it out. 

Money would be no issue, and I would receive the time that I so desperately needed to make my class truly shine. While Legendary items would still take me years to create, common and uncommon items would take hours thanks to Magic Item Adept. The Boots of Striding and Springing, Brooch of Shielding, Eyes of the Eagle, Gauntlets of Ogre Power, Headband of Intellect, the Immovable Rod, Periapt of Wound Closure, Ring of Truth Telling, and the Serpent Scale Armor, to name but a few. Each of them was uniquely beneficial to the wearer and it’d take about ten hours for each one. 

With my spells like Creation or Fabricate, I’d always have exactly what I needed to build them, too. 

“By the time we step out of the shadows, we hit them hard. Harder than they’ve ever been hit before. And we don’t let up until the job is done,” I said, stressing the words. This would be war against an enemy that thrived in the shadows, and we would have to beat them at their own game. “This… this is something that you have to commit to. Because once you start down this road, there’s no going back.”

There was a pregnant pause that settled over the room as every single one of them considered their options. If we did this, and we did it right, then maybe we’d be able to live out normal lives when it was all said and done. But those lives wouldn’t be with our real names, and maybe not even our real faces. Once we began hunting down Umbrella, every single government in the world was going to want us for my tech, and they’d stop at nothing to get it. 

They understood that. This was a commitment-

“I’m in,” Chris decided, ending the silence only a few seconds after it began. 

“Same here,” Leon swiftly followed up. “I.. came in at the tail end of this, but I saw enough. I never want what happened here to happen again, and you seem like the best bet to make sure that it doesn’t.”

One by one, the others all voiced their agreement. Carlos, Kevin, and even Ada all swiftly agreed to become the foundation of something new. I breathed a little easier with every confirmation before I found myself glancing over my shoulder at Jill, to find her cocking her head at me. “Was there any doubt?”

Not really, but it was nice to hear. 

“One question, though,” Carlos spoke up, leaning forward with a slight grin on his face. “We’re a super secret spy organization now, right? What are we calling ourselves?”

To that, I answered with a cutting grin. “An umbrella isn’t much use in a storm, so that's what we’ll be. From this day onward…”

“We’re the Storm.”