ring, ring [Exemplary]

[Albert Wesker]

As he stepped back out into the hallway, a sudden noise caught his ear and he stopped dead. "Something else down here..."

He wasn't surprised. All the noise he'd been making; kicking and bashing the doors earlier, his forcing the door to security open, and his tumble into the water. It was bound to have alerted anything paying even remote attention down here. It had been a faint noise, barely audible over the sloshing and splashing of his own passage through the door. At first he had even mistaken it for his own passage, but it came out of tune with his movements. Something else, slowly shuffling and splashing through the water. Further on, back down the hallway.

"Well, at least I'll have some company," he commented, before putting it out of mind.

Turning toward the armory, he picked his pace up, pushing through the icy water to reach the storage room. Stairs within, just past the light spilling in through the doors, lead him up out of the water, thankfully. The ground was still soaked, a puddle an inch or two deep covering the floor. Finally, relief from the ongoing nuisance of that slimy, obscuring water. At least here, with the aid of the flashlight, he could see the floor, and all that lay strewn about it.

It was a grisly sight, as he had been expecting thanks to the picture of the room he'd gotten from the security monitor. No less than three corpses lay strewn about, along with a typhoon's worth of spent bullet casings and bullets. It was a mess, and he made sure to carefully pick his way along, over and through the treacherous brass minefield. There were two things here that he had an eye for. One of them he retrieved from near a fallen corpse: the weapon of the guards here. Battered, and likely with an empty magazine, but much more useful than his Samurai Edge if he were to encounter something down here. Reliable as the pistol was, it was rather limited. He discarded the spent magazine, and after some searching was able to turn up three more from its former owner. He stowed his pistol in its holster, reloading the rifle as he trudged to the back of the room.

He'd have preferred lockpicks, if he had the time to waste on using them, but in this situation...

He exited the room with a few grenades quickly clipped to his belt, and the looted rifle in his hands. The flashlight had been fixed to the rifle so he could still utilize it, while keeping both hands on the weapon. Slapdash and jury-rigged together, but it would do for now. It only had to last until he could escape this place. Back out to the hallway, and to the door to the security offices. "Now, then...let's see just how sturdy your construction really is." He reached for one of the grenades he'd picked up, striding up to the locked door of the security chief's office. Carefully, he wedged the explosive between the handle and the door, before pulling the pin and quickly sloshing out of the room. Around the corner, into the adjacent side office would have to do. He threw himself around the corner, and flattened himself against the wall as the blast went off.

Stepping back around, he was satisfied. The door was still standing, but the handle and lock had been completely blown off — along with a sizable chunk of the wall and doorframe. A solid kick forced the door open, and he entered the office. He found much of use here, including the security chief's computer, somehow still in working order despite the shape of this place. Already opened to a memo he'd apparently been reading when he had to beat a hasty retreat. From the head researcher, detailing his plans to change the access code for the emergency exit. And a reminder to come by and pick up the new cardkey, after it had been synced to the new code, making sure to store it in the safe.

"How convenient...telling me exactly where it is." A light smirk crossed his features for a second. " I suppose you would have earned some thanks, if you were still alive."

Further checking of the computer revealed the emergency state had locked most of it down, leaving only some basic functions available. One of them, luckily, was 'access secure safe'. Intended to be an emergency use action, most likely, when you didn't have time to bother with entering a password or whatever other inane security measures were in place here to open the safe. Accessing the function, there was a short countdown of five seconds, before the sound of a panel sliding open in the wall behind him. Turning around, Wesker beheld a small safe set into the wall, the electronic lock on it lit up green. A solid tug on the handle, and the door popped open with a hiss. Inside, there was a small collection of items: an electronic tablet, a packet of files in a manilla folder, some sort of sealed metallic tube, and the keycard he was after. All of that, sitting securely in a metallic case to hold it all.

Curiosity got the better of him, and he swept everything up, shutting the case after removing the keycard. Perhaps he could get something useful out of it, once he was out here.

With the case in hand, he turned to leave the office, only to catch sight of something slowly lumbering through the doorway back out into the hallway, across the regular security offices.

Flesh a sickly, greenish-gray pallor. Rotting, falling off, and completely waterlogged from lying around in the water. Eyes a pale, empty white color. Shambling, and lurching to and fro with each step. Arms raised up, fingers erratically curling and uncurling, grasping at nothing and seeking for something its near-sightless gaze couldn't find. Wesker knew right away what it was. "Well, well, well...seems like it was some sort of outbreak after all." No time to dwell reliving old memories, however. The droning, automated voice announced as much: T-minus three minutes until detonation.

Setting the case on the desk, Wesker raised the rifle and sighed down it at the walking corpse. "Be a good boy, and go back to sleep." A burst of gunfire briefly illuminated the room, and the thunder of it drowned out the damn siren for just a moment. Then a dull groan, and a splash as the shambling zombie fell back into the water and returned to death's embrace. "Killing that which is already dead..." Hefting the rifle up to rest on his shoulder, he retrieved the case as he started for the door, back into the hallway. "...how nostalgic."