ring, ring [Exemplary]

[Albert Wesker]

Down the hall he trudged, slogging and splashing through the water. The ground angled up on an incline, forming a ramp leading up to the doors leading into the living quarters. Thankfully, that brought the water level down to just below ankle deep. Still a nuisance, but a bearable one. He reached the doors, finding them arranged in a set of six, three to either side. One hung crazily off its hinges, another stood wide open. The furthest on the right had been completely smashed in. Definitely a scene of chaos here, even if the remaining three seemed largely untouched by whatever destruction had taken place here. That was a good sign, under most circumstances. But with any luck...the doors still intact would be locked, and become just one more thing to slow him down in his progress.

Pushing those thoughts aside for the sake of not wasting time to dwell on his growing frustration, he slowly stepped up to the first door. Still intact, and securely shut. He tried the handle, and it turned. The door swung inward with only token resistance. A solid shove pushed it the rest of the way open, and into the room he went. The lights were still on, and undamaged here, thankfully enough. Far from fancy, and very sparsely furnished, but serviceable enough. He wasted no time in getting to his search, rummaging and tearing through everything he could get his hands on. Files from the desk, spare clothes from the dresser, and all manner of other detritus soon littered the room, floating in the shallow water. In the end, he'd only managed to turn up what looked like the personal journal of whoever had occupied this room.

He flipped through it as he returned to the hallway, scanning a page here and there but his attention mostly focused on moving on. Nothing of any interest to be found, just personal notes and observations on what had gone on here. The book was discarded in front of the next door, which turned out to be locked. That drew an irritated snarl from him and he stepped back, lifting one leg to deliver a sharp kick. The door rattled, but held firm, even as pain lanced up his leg. He wheezed, clenching his teeth to bite down on his pain as he readied again and with a second kick, the lock gave and the door crashed open. The search of this room provided something of more concrete use, in the form of a note pinned to the desk. The head researcher and chief of security were the ones in charge of managing the access code and the keycard necessary to open the emergency exit. A typical arrangement, and it gave some direction as to what he would need to get out of here. Now it was merely a matter of finding them.

He continued his ransacking of the room, just to ensure there was nothing else of use, before moving on. The next was the door hanging off its hinges. The lights inside flickered and sputtered weakly, and blood had stained the floors and walls. A grisly sight, but it wasn't going to impede his search. Turning the room upside down revealed a memo from the head researcher, noting that the access code for the emergency exit was due to be changed soon, as per standard procedure. That was enough to tell him this was not the room he needed, and he moved on, across the hall to the door standing wide open. Nothing of use was turned up in his increasingly aggressive and frantic searching, leaving him to move on to the last two doors. The one knocked completely off its hinges was pitch black, leaving him no option to search it just yet. The other was once again locked, and far more securely. A kick failed to so much as rattle it in the frame, and even a shot from his pistol to the lock failed to budge it. Snarling in frustration, he turned back for the intersection. The security section had better have something of use.

As he sloshed back down the hall, the automated system droned out overhead. T-minus five minutes until detonation.