Book Two - Chapter : Redfield

... and all of them assembled themselves before him in a vast crescent, filing out from all directions, an entire armory directed at him.
Abut a dozen ZHAR fighters also found their place, hovering over the shimmering sea of black uniforms.

There he was, Cecil Reinhart, standing alone in a clearing, apparently armed with nothing but a puny blade and about to have a tonne of lead pumped into and through his body. He wanted to scream at them, to do something, anything to prevent what was about to come.

But he wasn't the one who was in charge of his body anymore...

Suddenly, the hard corners of his beak pulled up into a smile.

'Look at them, Cecil,' said the sly voice in his head. 'So very fragile... So very... pitiful. I'd spare them if that was your wish,' the voice said as he stared at the only one in red who had his gloved hand raised over his head for all his comrades to see, 'But you don't want me to spare them, don't you?' Three fingers, He wore the exact same red-over-black uniform as Brooks. Their General. 'Everyone should get what they deserve, don't you think so?' Two fingers.

At the far end of the crescent, his eyes detected the the trembling of an assault rifle in the hands of a blond woman. She was young, around his age, not more than twenty. Somewhere in the middle, his ears detected the slight bleep of a walkie. Over to the right, the pounding of a heart against kevlar. And to the left, the sound of someone breathing through their teeth.

'Let's give em' justice, shall we?'

And then it happened, he didn't even have the milliseconds to process this small sentence. He was flying with his blade and then it was all over. It couldn't of have taken more than two seconds, though it seemed to take much, much longer.

He stood there, about thirty feet closer to the crescent. All was quiet, even the birds halted their songs and the trees refused to whisper in the wind. Time seemed to stop.

The counting man still had his arm up. He lowered it slowly, trembling ever so slightly. It looked as if he was reaching for his rifle , but no. His arm hovered next to the huge red smile on his neck which then started to run over his kevlar and cascade onto his bots. The General's knees buckled and he lay dead in a pool of scarlet as red as his uniform.

Cecil could only stare as the rest followed suit, crumpling over one another, making horrible choking sounds as they went. His feet started a brisk pace onwards into the gore. The smile never left his face.

He wanted to throw up, to feel sick at the very least.

'Oh, we don't want that now, do we?' the voice said in his head.

He straitened up and held his head high as though he were in some sort of victory parade. Everything was red, even the sky and the trees. He took a whiff of the air. Blood. The ground ran red with the stuff. His patchy gray jeans and sneakers were covered with it as he brushed against the oozing lumps of flesh beneath him. His gaze was directed at the main building, at the great gear and leaf with the red sky behind it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw it: movement.

The sides of his beak pulled up higher and he seemed to cock his head to the side as he directed his gaze upon the thing which had caught his attention: the trembling girl with the rifle.

She lay on her back, seemingly spray-painted with blood. Specks of the stuff stood out like ebony against ivory on a piano on her porcelain-white skin. The moment she heard Cecil, her face twisted into what he could only describe as a cross between a silent scream and utter terror.

She began shoving herself backwards away from his advancement. Her rifle lay forgotten by her side. Maybe she knew she wouldn't stand a chance against him. She now lay in his shadow, staring up at him with eyes dilated in fear. What was his other self going to do? Rape her right here in this blood-soaked meadow?

The smirk on his face changed, molding into what he guessed was a kinder, more gentle expression.

'Help your friends and head over to Point Red. My people will provide medical help, food and shelter. Jenna Williams sends her regards,' were the words that came out of his beak. He expected the sly voice in his head to come out sounding like Satan himself.

"Help your friends." Cecil's head swiveled around and sure enough, about a quarter of the spared uniforms were already backing away from him down the path that would take them to Point Red. About half of the entire battalion survived.

The girl, R. Madison by the tag on her front nodded once and scurried over, stumbling and tripping over her boots, to a boy who looked about thirteen, K. Madison, who was holding a shaky rifle aimed at Cecil's heart. He looked miniature in the gear. She took her brother by the forearm and before she sprinted down the path with him, she stared into Cecil's eyes.

'T-Thank you...' the words came out as a squeak.

Cecil nodded once before turning his attention upon Rodger Powell, Head of Planning and Development at iDen.

'See, Cecil? I'm a lot like you. I can play nice. I'm not a bad guy, really. But some people...' the sly voice didn't finish. He didn't need to. Cecil understood.

He probably came out to watch Cecil get reduced to minced meat via a hundred machine guns. Unfortunately for him, he was never going to be allowed that pleasure. Powell was backing up now towards the main buildings, dragging himself backwards in the dirt, just like that Madison girl. His spectacles lay broken beside Cecil's bloodied Converse. Powell's signature gray and white suit was (literally) a bloody mess. He stopped backing up, using his cut-up hands instead, to help dictate some unintelligible offer for him.

Powell's offer, whatever it was, was of no worth to him. He had a promise to keep, and Cecil Reinhart wasn't the type to break promises.

'How're you doing, Powell?' His voice changed from the kind one he used on the Madison girl to the satanic one he imagined the voice used to speak out loud. Maybe they weren't so different after all.

Rodger Powell cowered on the dirt at his feet. This man, whom, with one simple order, had killed tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people here, and millions more all around the world. "You've got to understand, Mr. Reinahrt. Business is business. And with people like you around, business just isn't profitable," he had said to him just before he got dragged away to a waiting firing squad along with Morrison. Cecil had yelled a tonne of profanities at him and a final promise to-

'I do believe I have a promise to keep...' Cecil said sinisterly.

'N-NO! Please! No!! GOD! PLEASE!! NO!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!' Powell's last vowel stretched into a blood-curdling scream. More screams followed, echoing off into the distance until Rodger Powell finally lay dead on the ground before him.

Cecil Reinhart promised to carve Rodger Powell like a Halloween pumpkin... And so he did... With his beak...

He spat out the last of the blood as he finished, ripping a sleeve off his jacket to wipe the worst off his face and front. He hadn't anticipated using his beak to do the job. Cecil picked up his dropped knife and a rifle plus ammo belt off one of the dead Guards before stomping off towards the complex. At least he wasn't smiling anymore.

'Sorry about that. Lost my mind... a little,' the voice said, now sounding apologetic and genuinely sincere. 'Hell, I'm sorry for everything. Now, I've done my job. The rest is up to you now... Good luck.'

And with that, he had control again. His knees buckled from the shock and the first thing he did with his own free will was stand up again and run to a tree so he could vomit.

*Sorry, no time to check the spelling. It's a chapter draft for Book 2. Comment, yea? Thanks.