[4-14] The Town

[Albert Wesker]

"...It's strange." Colonel spoke up after a few moments. As ever, his tone measured and stoic, bordering on monotonous. What he might have been referring to was anyone's guess, for all the hint his inflection gave. His cold, mechanically unblinking stare remained firmly rooted staring straight forward. Only the slow, routine sweep of his pale green faux irises gave any indication he hadn't just zoned out entirely.

Abner just shifted, giving a faint shrug. "Yeah? I hadn't noticed. What part of it's got you, exactly?"

"All of it." There was a faint tinge of actual feeling to the words this time. A sharp, cold spike of anger — and unease. "This island. It doesn't feel right." He finally turned his head to look directly at Abner, his eyes glowing dimly under the steadily advancing cover of night. "The Omniverse works strangely all on its own. After a while, that strangeness starts to become routine. Normal. This is an entirely different kind of strange."

"Y'know... Was just thinking that myself." Abner just shook his head. "It's real bizarre, alright. But that's just how it works, y'know? Weird shit on top of more weird shit."

"And then that...that incident." The war machine's gaze snapped back front. "I was effected by it, just the same as you were. I'm a machine. You three aren't. It doesn't add up." A moment later, he also added, "...and that it just came out of nowhere like it did is even more worrying. An unpredictable, unexplainable, and unknown factor when we're already this deep into territory with every intention of proving itself hostile."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it... Bad news. Real bad news."

Colonel's features tightened into a grim scowl, his eyes narrowing in consternation. This would have been a good time to have Cricket along. He was insufferably cheery and his particular brand of wit wasn't exactly missed — not yet, at any rate — but he was clever, and another mind pondering over this whole mess couldn't possibly hurt matters.

The wait, while Trent and Kristen gathered up the found supplies, compounded with the silence of the town to give rise to one further unsettling revelation: the state of the town itself. In his time with Baryl, Colonel had seen more than one evacuation. And this scene, the way this town was so thoroughly deserted... It damn sure looked like an evacuation. Which raised several questions of varying import.

"...who evacuated this town?" he muttered under his breath, turning his head this way and that to get a broader view of things. "And for that matter, why?" He strode several paces forward, out into street, and paused there. He went silent and still again, his eyes drifting closed. He wasn't looking anymore, that hadn't told him much that wasn't obvious so far. He listened, as intently as he could. The advanced auditory programming he'd had to help identify battlefield sounds and get the drop on an enemy had yet to be restored, but he had a much higher threshold for picking up noises — and specifically, pitches and ranges of sound — far and away above most humans and other organic lifeforms.

To his simultaneous dismay and relief, he heard nothing. Only the faint pattering of rain as it continued to drizzle, and the lonesome sighing of wind through the abandoned streets. It was peaceful, and eerie all at once. And it was setting off every danger alarm and bad feeling in Colonel's head that there was. It just felt off; very wrong, somehow. Abandoned cities were rife with places for possible ambush and danger to lurk. Always a shadowed corner you couldn't keep a watch on. Always some rooftop corner out of view. Someone — or, on this island, something — just waiting to jump out of a blind spot you didn't know you had.

"Ready to go. Or, uh...I think, anyway." It was the voice of Trent, finally stepping back through the obnoxiously Western double doors alongside Kristen, and the sound of it drew the soldier navi's attention back outward from his increasingly paranoid thoughts. He turned on one heel, surveying his erstwhile companions. It was a matter of convenience, more than anything. Strength in numbers. And while two of that number didn't look like they would add very much strength... Well, two more pairs of eyes and ears never really hurt things.

Besides. They were secondaries. If they died out here in this crazy hell, that was it for them. He and Abner had it a bit different. A bit worse, some might say. As grim as it was, that made them expendable. They would come back, sooner or later — hopefully, at any rate — and be none the worse off for it. A little downtrodden and disgruntled at the whole dying aspect, but otherwise unharmed. Honestly, it could be worse.

Kristen shifted uneasily under the weight of the combat program's gaze, and he promptly turned aside, looking first one way up the street, then the other. "...It's gotten dark," he finally said, stating the painfully obvious. "As much as I want to move on, it would be a fool's errand to do that at this point. In the dark, and with the threat of rain still looming..." His eyes drifted back the way they had come, where he'd been forced to 'improvise'. "...and with who knows what else out there."

"And unlike a certain robot with a sword for an arm, we could use some rest." Abner just spit angrily off to one side. "I don't like it much either. But it doesn't really change facts much."

"Shelter for the night, then." Colonel's lack of enthusiasm over the idea was plain, even through his monotonous way of saying it. But it was equally clear he knew it was required. "Then let's get a move on. We won't find it standing around here."

"Well, how about I just lead the way again, then?" Abner grunted.

The sarcasm went right over the machine's head.

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