Lady Death

If Izzy was angling for a laugh with the crack about job openings, it might be surprising just how successful she is. There's a brief snort that almost gets stopped by Emily clamping her lips together, but when it escapes the field researcher lets her head fall forward and laughs it out.

"Ugh. Yeah. Maybe I wouldn't take this over some jobs, but I tried desk work already and it didn't agree with me."

A good segue, in fact, into the next question being asked. Emily puffs out a breath, chuckles again in a slightly more self-effacing way, and leans against a bookshelf, elbows back against one of the shelves.

"Depends how far back you want to go. I went to the BSAA from federal work - undercover with the DEA. That's part of the reason I've taken so well to this new operation. I've worked alongside some pretty questionable people before... you'd be surprised how often taking out criminals puts you in line with other criminals. Gangsters are pretty good at tipping us off when their enemies are going to be doing something."

Oh, that was funny.

The woman smiled and jutted out her hip playfully, "Lookitchu! Got not one, but two big ol' helpings of alphabet soup at your table!"

Izzy laughed brightly, "Take it as a compliment, you don't act the type. And believe me, I've dealt with more than my fair share of 'em."

Humor aside, Izzy let her arms fall to her side as she hummed thoughtfully, pacing a circle back around to her desk. She took one of her papers and rustled it to straighten it upright in hand. Unfinished business from a decade ago.

"In all seriousness, that's an impressive skill set, and I get what you mean not really being suited for desk work, or sittin' on your ass while everyone else gets to be hands on. S'why I'm glad to be back, now."

The reason for her leave of absence sat in the Lodge's Overlook, reading aloud subnautical adventures to a bunch of captive, dying mercenaries. Morbidly, it reminded her of the extracurricular chorus trips to sing Christmas carols at nursing homes.

Subject name: HUNK Subject occupation: USS operative Reason for report: HUNK has recently seen heavy action and carried out a number of relatively intense operations yet has shown no signs of stress or any normal emotional response for that matter. Our sessions were to ascertain whether HUNK has sustained any long-term, hidden psychological damage as a result of his participation in these operations. First impressions: My first impressions of HUNK were of a man incredibly committed to his work. In fact, in all my conversations with him, he never once suggested that his life contained anything other than his duties as a member of USS. This however was not seen as a negative – HUNK was not complaining – if anything it showed that HUNK was not interested in anything which did not relate to life as a member of USS. It's hard in fact to imagine HUNK complaining about anything. He is very much a product of his profession in that he is a man who follows orders to the letter – with no regard to his own safety, or to the consequences of his actions. It's actually quite a task to get HUNK to speak about many things in great detail – and virtually impossible to get him to talk about himself. Even after several sessions, I am still in the dark about most of his background – his family, friends (I'm almost certain HUNK would see the whole concept of 'friends' as laughable) or even relationships (the name Bella seems to have some resonance with him although I'm yet to ascertain what the relationship is exactly) are a closed door. With any other subject I would suggest that I need more time to break through the resistance, to really get through to the inner HUNK – but it's apparent to me that HUNK is not offering any resistance. It's almost as if he's wiped those parts of his life from his memory. This could well be a method he's developed to protect himself from the horrors he's seen – to separate the human side of HUNK from the soldier side. The problem is, I think the soldier side is now all there is to him. My fear is that the human side of HUNK is now lost forever. As a psychologist, this is a fascinating study. I should imagine that for a USS commander, HUNK is the ideal soldier – almost the super soldier of legend. He seems to have no morals or reservations, no fear and no apparent desire to get out and return to an individual life at all. HUNK is at his most animated when talking about action he has seen. But even here, he is not trying to impr6ss, he merely relates the action that took place. The incident we'll come to in more detail shortly demonstrates that his cold-hearted, detached persona is not an act, but s#aethi?? that is not a part of him. It is this that ??@%^& ###.. tui luwl +%•ª ©∆ further study if requies.

Disgusting.

Emily pauses, looking over what the others have marked down on the map as being potentially connected - a cluster in Africa, ditto Eastern Europe.

The scattering of dots in China - she imagines they're unrelated, but the freelancer takes the marker hanging by the map by a piece of string and adds two more. One in Thailand, and another in Borneo. She has thoughts to share on both, but they're forestalled by a question. And... not a question she's been especially eager to answer, but it was bound to come up eventually.

"...I think that a lot of people get caught up in the idea of following an organization or a person. When I left the BSAA, I'm sure there were people there that were shocked I was "abandoning" the... ideal of it. The gleaming standard of anti-BOW planning."

She pauses. Sighs. "And I'm certain if Chris Redfield heard about the company I keep these days he'd be beside himself. The thing is... I'm still doing the thing I set out to do in the first place. The BSAA became unable to effectively confront the threats of bioterrorism, and... well, I tried doing things below board with Chris, and he didn't exactly put up a strong first impression. The work is the point. Makes for strange bedfellows, but I have to back the most effective group. Right now that's you."

Izzy glanced over the new pins that Emily added, humming thoughtfully.

"Or hey- we may even have a few openings soon, if worse comes to worst."

The joke is decidedly in poor taste, all things considered, but who was going to call her on it?

"The work is the point," Izzy parroted in agreement, letting her arms unfold from her chest to rest her hands on her hips, "I like this job. Sure beats selling beads by the road or being a cashier at the Mizoil. I'd actually prefer fighting Oozes and zombies to having truck drivers splashin' mud on me or dealing with a dumb customer any day of the week."

Still, if Vivi was interested in the work (eventually), Izzy would still make her have those kind of jobs that dealt with putting up with the worst of people.

It builds character.

The full name hit her like a truck, though. Red Turtle- Yeah, that name brought back more then a few memories. “No way-“ she laughs, looking her over a few more times, and unable to keep herself from cracking up when she mentions the vampire novels. “Oh no- Yeah, perfectly good reason to change your name after that. Shits tainted after that book, I swear.”

“I think we only went up there a few times when we needed help with the horses…” She tilts her head a bit, thinking about the reservation on the mountain in a bit deeper detail. “Dad had friends up there that were good with breaking in the more ornery foals once they were of riding age… Wonder how much it’s changed.”

Izzy herself had spent a lot of time as a ranch hand, helping the elder with menial tasks after school and learning both how to ride and desensitize horses. There were more than a few times she'd gone with a bucket of rocks to bring escaped horses back home.

She was with Eric, hunting, when they came across the zombies on their grounds in the northeastern part of Raccoon Forest.

"A lot's changed," she says, "Had to. Entire city gone? Roads had to be remade. Where we got supplies from had to change. Lots of people lost part- or all - of their family. Landscape's changed with the earthquakes and all..."

Izzy shrugged, "But you can see for yourself if you get your tail back there."

She frowns a bit, the fallout of Raccoon city didn’t leave a single person spared of its influence, it seemed. Now that she’s older and actually mired in the system, she had to wonder if there was anything she could poke around in- Especially now that the ARK was unearthed.

The fact her house was still treated like a true crime scene even to this day had her quirking a sad, but almost fond smile, bringing a had up to her mouth.

“I gotta go back to Arklay. I’ve been fighting with the idea for ages, but that all but seals it. I gotta see this for myself.” She snorts, shrugging and turning to face Izzy fully.

“Hunting lands? You lived on the reservation?” She tilts her head a bit. The reservation was so close by that she remembers considering making the trip up the mountain as they were running away. Ultimately, she thought it safer not to try and drag her 6-year-old sister up there and fled toward the city instead, and hearing this was starting to make her regret that decision.

How different would life have been had they actually braved the mountain?

She folded her arms over her chest again, offering a lopsided smirk, "At the time, I was going by 'Bella'. Bella Red Turtle."

The woman laughed, lowering her head to shake it, "Not so much anymore. Only my ma and da are allowed to call me that- and they won't. Stopped being something I went by when that damn sparkling vampire romance book came out."

She rolled her eyes, "Didn't hear the end of it from the boys up there."

She waves her hand dismissively when the condolences are given. It clearly makes her upset, but it had been 13 years, she’s had time to adjust since then. Come to terms with her grief, but there’s days that are worse then others, always.

What she’s NOT expecting was the revelation of a mess of ghost stories supposedly surrounding her old house. Stone Ville was tiny and rural, lots of ranchers and a close knit community surrounding them. Rumors spread like wildfire, especially when things suddenly happen out of the blue like the outbreaks.

This told her two things- Izzy and her went to school together at some point, and her house was the only one that was affected by the T-virus that day.

“Of course there was.” She can’t help but laugh softly. “Rumors ain’t far off. My parents fell victim to the outbreak, me and my sister somehow didn’t, but I hid her in their closet and barred the door while I broke the lock on dads gun locker.”

She pulls the Hydra off her back as she says that, holding it out for Izzy to get a better look at. It’s showing it’s age, as clean and cared for as it was.

“Had to kill them before they killed us. Then we packed up everything we could carry and fled toward the city. Got picked up by UBCS and shuffled through orphanages after that.” She nods, shrugging and looking almost apologetic.

The sterilization missile dwarfed the local cannibals by a mile.

"Still," she quirks her shoulder, "think it was easier for our little pea-brains to focus on local cannibal killers than the next city over being blown to kingdom come, the fucking Army movin' in, rerouting the roads, and suits showin' up to say entire families are gone, and asking invasive questions."

There's resentment in her voice, but her expression flat. Izzy waits a moment before shrugging, "Well no one talks about that at the school anymore. You know what they still talk about? Harper House and the missing girls. Because there's nothing tweens love more than true crime and cartoons... and internet dances."

Not Vivi, thankfully. Izzy was grateful to have an asocial kid in the era of digital panopticon.

The mention of carving a trophy off only seemed to dawn on her when Izzy said it, and again, she looks annoyed, laughing softly as she shakes her head. “Fuckin’- I should have. I was coming out of getting clocked against the side of the boat to be fair, barely crossed my mind.” She laughs, dangling the water bottle at her side by the cap and putting her other hand in her pocket.

“Hard to forget a thing like that, I could probably try and recreate it somehow. I’m not sure how in-depth Queens abilities are, but I’d love to try and take it on with a more experienced group. It was just me and Redfield with true combat experience on that boat, and two scrappy information analysts.”

Rest in peace, Alyssa, the woman that you were…

A beat, and she sucks in air through grit teeth at Izzy’s next question, rolling her head a bit back and forth in thought. “Had a sister. She was one of Dereks victims. Mutated her with C virus, Infected me with what I had before Elpis.” She signs, nodding once, only to look theother woman over in some shock at the mention of Stone Ville.

"You could try," she agrees, "But she does her best work with hard data. Then we put it to paper."

It was something pretty regimented in the Guild. They would let the AI decode the samples taken, cross-reference with feeds and photos from the field, and input their own real-world experience. They'd run a few simulation battles, hand-write their observations, and create playbooks for how to handle each BOW species.

Training with Queenie was an intensive process even without the battle simulations, but infinitely more cost effective and safer than transporting live specimens to train against and butcher (which they did at times, clandestinely).

Izzy had to hand it to Umbrella's techies, especially Umbrella Japan. They knew how to make a great archive and physics engine.

But at the topic of Stoneville, and of Helena's deceased sister, Izzy put her hands in her pockets.

"Jeez. Sorry about that. I was asking because Harper House is kind of a local legend. When I was in middle school, around the time of the outbreaks, there was rumors about cannibals at the house. 'Father went crazy and ate the whole family, no trace of the little girls to be found'- that kind of hokey shit."

"Bored. Sure. I'm bored."

Bored and feeling like hell. There was a constant feeling of pins and needles in his fingers that brought an itch to his knuckles, and he cursed the T-Virus for all it was worth- and it was worth a lot.

His grand-daughter took center stage, ignoring the current condition of his body out of either politeness or just an eagerness to share everything about... Mesopotamia, and ratios. And machines. Six simple machines. His brain, feverish, conjured up garbled pictures of the "Six Simple Machines" in question. Some things didn't change from schooling.

So he was going to be a static babysitter? Brick made lazy trilling sounds, unwilling to move from the dead lay on his lap.

"Mara was fine with that?"

And Vivi seemed more than thrilled to be back.

"Alright. We'll talk about all of the machines," he said, tapping his palm on the chair arm and physically moving the cat off his legs by picking him up. The cat dangled, limp, and Hunk put it down beside him with a grunt.

As the cat rumbled purrs, Izzy left her daughter to her own devices, and listened to what needed to be done- and that itself was plenty of clue as to who was affected by this strange syndrome.

Avalanche duty? Beltway must also be out of commission.

"Yeah, mom was fine with that," she affirms, "You're not going anywhere, and she's only got one grandpa."

There wasn't any enmity between her parents that Izzy was aware of. Plenty of disagreements and differing opinions from life experience and personality, and the simple fact that nothing about life in Arklay was simple. Things didn't get simpler, either.

Izzy had done plenty that her mother hadn't approved of- but her mother only had herself to blame for the 'devil-may-care' attitude Izzy inherited. The stubborn persistence of her father probably made that more intolerable, though.

"Avalanche duty, and clear the helepad," she repeated, "Got it. Guess Beltway's gone down then, too. I'll look at the conditions of the slopes and the logs. As far as the helepad goes, do you know if we got enough Ice-Melt in the maintenance garage?"

She strolled over to the massive window overlooking the mountainside, and the grey slurry that was falling down. They'd be flying in bad weather if there was any corpses that needed to be moved. But it was still nowhere near as bad as it could be- and had been at times.

She almost misses that Izzy's stood up- and stands as well when she glances over, coming to check the map too.

There's... a lot here. It's definitely more her style than beseeching an AI fragment for information, and if she wasn't in company Emily might make a bit of a game of seeing how many of these dots, circles and shaded areas she can connect to some corresponding BOW outbreak.

"I was tracking anything Tricell was doing, but Plagas is definitely up there. I know that the Majini were the last serious... what would you call it, a nest? There were a lot of them, spread over a pretty wide area. Granted..."

The spook trails off, grimaces. "Well. If we're talking in those terms then of course Carla is going to come up eventually. Actually... if it was in the ESR, there's a chance she might know something about it from."

Beat.

"I think 'nest' is probably the simplest, or a 'hive'. There's really nothing like plagas but plagas."

Izzy turned herself away from the map to face Tundra, "Lab-grown Plagas are difficult to get a hold of. Maybe you should talk to Ahab when she's not so busy."

She sighed. The woman was having the time of her life running an impromptu clinic in the Lodge's overlook. Every piece of dead tissue and lab equipment examined seemed to give her new ideas... Izzy couldn't tell if it was progress on treating the disease, but the old soldiers were stable, and able to manage some of the pain this seemed to accompany the strange syndrome.

Alongside that, Vivi's schoolwork seemed to prove ample distraction for the old mercenaries, and practicing her reading aloud with Jules Verne's submarine adventure kept her captive audience entertained while their own Captain Ahab listened into the exploits of the fictional Captain Nemo.

If she craned her head, she could hear the electrical transmission of her daughter's voice from the overlook:

"These composers," Captain Nemo answered me, "are the contemporaries of Orpheus, because in the annals of the dead, all chronological differences fade; and I'm dead, professor, quite as dead as those friends of yours sleeping six feet under!"

Izzy snorted quietly at the passage, returning her attention back to the map of outbreaks, some marked by their own exploits, some marked as points of interest.

"Yeah- Basically." She snorts, taking another long sip of her water before leveling Izzy with a quizzical look- Disappointed? That was hell on earth, she'd never wish that experience on her worst enemy.

"Kinda- I got picked up because I basically had no where else to turn. DSO provided me a measure of security while my name was being cleared in court, and it just wound up suiting my style better... plus everyone I consider close as family was here. Never truly got to thank Hunnigan for setting my record straight... That woman does too much." She grins, pulling her badge from her pocket after a moment to look at it.

"One benefit is that we can act outside of federal overreach. No matter where we wind up, we can go just about anywhere. Used that to piss off a good chunk of cops in Wisconsin who thought they were hot shit. Got a water company that was infecting their supply with A-virus shut down and got to fight a giant mutated muskie on top of it."

A beat, and she pockets the badge again. "I ever swim in Lake Superior again it'll be too soon."

Izzy places a hand on her hip, listening to Helena's stories of how she came to be where she was.

"Damn, you should have saved a scale or something from that," Izzy remarks, "Coulda uploaded that thing's profile to Queenie for battle sims. For as much giant water monsters are a thing in the field, we have so little combat data on them."

She snorts quietly, tucking her chin to her chest with a shake of her head, "Oh, Vivi? Yeah, she's my pride. Hell-raiser like the rest of us."

She was quiet, but keen, and had ambition without aim. The type that could be brilliant and trouble at once.

A beat passes between them. She clears her throat.

"Sorry- just... god, where to even begin. So, they were a power player in the FPC, obviously, but they completely failed to learn from the mistakes of Umbrella. If anything, they were worse." She keeps reading, though taking information in and giving it out is a pretty well-honed skill and her elocution doesn't take the slightest hit in the process.

"Most of what I was interested in was what they were doing in the intervening years between the RCI and that whole... dogfuck in Kijuju. It's pretty clear based on what was in place at the time of the major outbreak they had already been at it for a while, and it's not really shocking that Wesker deciding to involve himself was what blew it open in the end." A few more gulps of coffee, despite it being less than lukewarm at this point. She went to the trouble of pouring it, after all.

A few seconds pass in silence, then she slumps back in her seat a bit and gestures hopelessly. "Honestly... the same thing happened there as has been happening there for ages. A big Western company flew in, took advantage of a developing nation with no resources to provide serious oversight and a vested interest in bringing in that much potential capital for their own purposes."

Problem being, of course, that the tests being carried out by Tricell weren't just pesticides and untested medical procedures. Well, procedures, kind of, but.

"Sold "guns" to both sides, because of course they did. Ran experiments on the locals, because who would miss them. Frankly... it's fitting that they ended up getting blown out because someone who actually knew what they were doing showed up. There are still splinters dug deep into Kijuju and presumably other bordering nations, but my main concern now..."

Emily trails off. Considers whether her personal project is going to survive being part of a company, private military or otherwise.

She rested the heels of her palms on the edge of the table behind her, jutting her leg out to get comfortable listening to the operator's rundown of her personal mission. The intervening years between Raccoon City and the Kijuju incident.

"It's not unusual for these kinds of scientists to be paperclipped into other organizations or governments," Izzy replies, "If you're tracking plagas parasites specifically, I think it may be a good idea to broaden the scope of your search to include the Eastern Slav Republic."

She stood up straight again, folding her arms across her chest, and jutting her jaw toward the map on the wall.

"Plagas aren't something that move on their own. Like you said, they root like ticks. I know the Eastern Slav Republic's president and oligarchs used a plaga parasite that was defective by industry standard. I know that the defectiveness was purposeful."

She struts over to the map, arms still crossed and looking over a point labeled 'the Kijuju Exclusion Zone'.