Breaking the newest experiment out of his confinement in Umbrella Corporation’s laboratory was an easy enough task for Jacqueline to accomplish. She had all the access codes, all the key cards, and had memorized every inch of the ultra-secret facility in which she worked. She was assigned to watch over this newest test subject, a young man who was not to be given a name, but simply a series of digits, taped to the front of his plexiglass cell. She would come to learn who he was each time she entered the room to study his behavior, feeling disgust from the fact that she was aiding in the torture of this poor boy. She couldn’t stand it any longer.
They developed a friendship, one that was kept under tight wraps and steeped in hushed secrecy for their safety. Jacqueline’s name was shortened to Jackie for simplicity’s sake, and she learned he used to be Carson, but preferred to be called Cross by his long-gone friends. They shared a commonality, the reality that they were both infected by viruses put out by the company, and their families were torn apart by the devastating consequences of biochemical engineering having been put into the wrong hands.
It wasn’t long before plans for an escape were put into place.
Unfortunately, Jackie underestimated just how difficult it would be for both of them to evade Umbrella Corporation’s workers, fully and tirelessly dedicated to their cause and not about to let a rebellious research assistant waltz off with their most important specimen to date.
Soon, they found themselves racing through the thick forests that encased the lab in a veil of underbrush. They were both severely out of breath, weary muscles using the last bits of energy they had to support each other as they ran, Jackie taking the lead as she knew the territory the best.
They were forced to skid to a halt, though, as Jackie suddenly couldn’t stop herself from keeling over, heaving and expelling the contents of her stomach. A substance akin to that of black tar spewed across the forest floor, and she continued to vomit the noxious, chunky liquid until she physically couldn’t anymore.
When she was finally finished, she looked up at her companion with horribly bloodshot eyes, shaky hand being raised to wipe her mouth, which only served to smear remnants of the black stuff across her face. “Maybe you should just go on without me. I’ll tell you which way to go, to get out of the area. But I think… I think I’d only end up being a dead weight to you. I don’t want to be the reason you get captured, again.”