Chapter 16: Freeze It, Break It, Kill It
Test Chamber No. 1
Silence was a lie. Only seconds after the Prototyrant collapsed… its body convulsed. "It can't be…" Rebecca whispered, stepping back as Richard moved forward, rifle trembling in his hands. The ice plates encasing the monster began to crack. A reddish light pulsed from within its body. The ground shook. Then a scream tore through the air — equal parts wounded beast's roar and strangled human cry.
"Back up!" Richard yelled, pushing Rebecca toward a ramp.
The Prototyrant rose. But it was no longer the same. Its body erupted in a cloud of steam. Fragments of its artificial skin sloughed off like scabs. New limbs crawled out from its ripped-open torso: muscular tentacles fringed with bony spines. Its blade-arm had tripled in length, unfolding like a whirling scythe. A second, gaping jaw sprouted beneath its main face, snapping like a bear trap. Its eyes… were human for a single heartbeat. Then they glazed over.
Rebecca watched in horror. "It's… mutating again!"
Richard reloaded with sweat pouring down his face. "Then it dies again," he growled.
The room shuddered with each of the creature's steps. The mutated Tyrant charged them like a runaway freight train. Richard squeezed the trigger. The recoil threw him backward, but the creature merely roared and kept coming.
Rebecca sprinted along a shaky catwalk toward an observation turret, seeking higher ground. Below her, Richard was dragged along into a lower platform. The floor beneath him buckled and gave way — he tumbled amid cables, cracked glass, and dried blood.
"Richaaard!" Rebecca screamed from above.
The Tyrant came crashing down after him, crushing everything in its path. Its spinning scythe-arm shredded metal columns as it charged. Richard flung himself flat behind a loose panel, barely deflecting a blow that would have cleaved him in two. The monster slammed into him, hurling him against an electrical console that exploded in sparks.
Richard screamed, his body crackling with electricity. "No…!" he growled through gritted teeth, staggering to his feet.
The Tyrant lifted its blade… and then — BANG! — a precise shot rang out, striking its neck. The monster roared and swung around.
Up on the catwalk, Rebecca had found a high-powered rifle, part of the chamber's observation arsenal. Her hands trembled as she chambered a round. "Get away from him!" she shouted.
The Tyrant lunged toward her — but the damaged catwalk couldn't bear its weight. CRAAAACK! The floor split apart. The Prototyrant plummeted into a tangle of live cables below. Electricity coursed through its mutilated body, convulsing it in midair before it crashed brutally onto the ground.
Richard crawled up on one knee. "Rebecca?" he called.
She dropped down a side ladder, panting. "I'm fine. You okay?"
He spat blood, breathing hard. "I've had better days…"
Through the haze of smoke and steam, they saw the Tyrant still moving. Burned and mutilated, but very much alive. From its back a final grotesque mutation was unfolding: a pulsing lump unfurled like a carnivorous flower.
"It won't stop…" Rebecca gasped.
"Then we finish it here," Richard growled. He grabbed a rusted steel bar with a sharpened tip from the debris.
The creature reared up like a twisted tower, drenched in blood and madness. It fixed them with lifeless eyes — then roared with all the hatred of the abyss. The roar shook the chamber like an explosion. The air turned suffocating. From the fleshy bulge on its back, red-hot tentacles shot out like snapping whips. One smashed into a metal wall — BOOOOM! — leaving a smoking crater. The monster's eyes were wild. It was truly insane.
"Now or never!" Richard yelled. He dashed across a collapsed section of catwalk toward a higher platform.
Rebecca dove behind a half-destroyed console, breathing hard and firing at the creature's exposed flesh. Tracer rounds sparked harmlessly against its hide. Every bullet seemed useless. This Tyrant was no mere experiment. It was pure aberration. A twisted god.
Richard reached an upper walkway, directly above a large liquid nitrogen tank. Below him lay his trapped partner. He looked down — and there it was.
The Prototyrant whipped its head around to face him.
"Hey!" Richard shouted. "Like a fight? Come on then, you bastard!"
The creature reared up and jumped straight at him. BOOOOOM! The platform trembled violently as the Tyrant's claws snatched at the edge, trying to climb up. Its blade-arm sliced through the metal structure like butter.
Richard sprinted to an emergency control panel. "Rebecca! When I give the word, open the nitrogen release valves — all of them!"
"What are you going to do?" she shouted, inching closer to another terminal. The Tyrant was climbing after Richard, its eyes blood-red with fury, tentacles reaching out.
"Freeze it from the inside!" he yelled. "Now!"
Rebecca slammed the panel's release lever.
The tank's valves burst open. A frigid cloud of vapor shot into the chamber, engulfing the Prototyrant. The metal girders around it began to crack and frost over. Its limbs turned white with ice. It roared in furious agony, but its movements grew lumbering and slow.
Richard seized the moment. He leapt at the Prototyrant… steel bar raised high. "THIS IS FOR ALL THE TROUBLE YOU CAUSED, DAMNED DEMON!" he screamed, driving the bar into its chest.
A geyser of black blood exploded outward. The Tyrant's roar became a scream of pure anguish, as if hell itself was tearing out of its throat.
Rebecca's voice cut through the chaos. "Richard!"
He was still there, pressing his full weight on the bar embedded in the creature's heart. The monster swung its blade at him again — but in its death throes, Richard had already grabbed a grenade from his belt, pin pulled. With one final effort he yanked it free and lobbed it into the Tyrant's gaping wound.
"Back to hell!" he shouted, vaulting away.
KABOOOOOM!
The Prototyrant detonated from within. Flesh, bone and twisted metal shards were blasted in all directions. Its spinal column snapped in two and the hulking body collapsed like a ruined mountain.
Silence. Only smoke… splattered blood… and the dying hiss of electricity.
Rebecca raced into the smoking wreckage. "Richard! Richard?!"
Emerging from the debris, Richard stood crookedly, bleeding and torn but alive. He managed a weary grin. "I'm fine," he growled. "I think it's really dead this time."
In the center of the chamber lay the Prototyrant's corpse, charred and shredded beyond recognition.
Suddenly an alarm blared through the facility. On a nearby panel a red warning flashed:
SELF-DESTRUCT PROTOCOL INITIATED.
TIME TO EVACUATE: 5 MINUTES.
Rebecca's knees wobbled. "Do you think… this time it's really over?"
Richard slung his rifle over his shoulder, breathing hard. He drew her trembling form close. "It's over. And if it isn't… then let the next one come."
Nearby, the elevator panel beeped. The indicator lights flickered and turned green. A message lit up on the screen: MAIN ELEVATOR – OPERATIONAL.
The door slid open with a hydraulic hiss, revealing the elevator car bathed in pale white light. Rebecca let out a long, shaky breath. "I can't believe we're actually getting out of here."
"Neither can I," Richard replied, stepping with her toward the lift. "But we earned it."
They both got inside and the door closed slowly behind them. As the elevator began its ascent, they exchanged a tired smile. They rose swiftly up the main shaft, side by side in silence. Both were a wreck: clothes in tatters, weapons hanging empty at their sides, hearts still pounding.
When the doors opened at last, a new shockwave thundered through the hallway — BOOOOM! — and the floor trembled beneath their feet.
"What was that?" Rebecca whispered, body tensing again.
"I don't know…" Richard murmured. His eyes darted to a control screen along the corridor. It was flashing red warnings:
CONTAINMENT PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. SELF-DESTRUCTION IN PROGRESS – T - 05:00.
"Damn," Richard cursed under his breath. "Umbrella's kill protocol. Someone triggered it. Maybe that bastard's voice… or an automated system."
"Do we still have an exit?" Rebecca asked.
"Yeah. Upstairs," he said.
They dashed down one final metal hallway to a side service elevator. The controls were sluggish, but finally the lift responded. They rode it upward in silence, accompanied only by the elevator's mechanical grind and the distant thuds of explosions echoing through the underground complex.
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