City Of The Dead

Standing, she took a last look around, wishing that the S.T.A.R.S. office had offered a little more in the way of supplies or information. All she’d found of any use was a discarded fanny pack in the desk behind Chris’s; according to the expired library card in one of the pouches, it had belonged to Jill Valentine. Claire had never met her, but Chris had mentioned her a couple of times, said she was good with a gun..

. . Too bad she didn’t leave one behind.

The team had obviously cleared out all of the important stuff after their suspension, although there were still a surprising number of personal items left around, framed pictures and coffee mugs and the like; she’d spotted Barry’s desk right away from the partly finished plastic gun model on top. Barry Burton was one of Chris’s closest friends, a huge, friendly bear of a man and a serious gun nut. Claire hoped that wherever Chris was, Barry was with him, watching his back. With a rocket launcher.

And speaking of. . .

On top of everything else, she needed to find another weapon, or more ammo for the nine-millimeter; she had thirteen bullets left, one full clip, and when those were gone, she was SOL. Maybe she should stop and check some of the corpses on the way back to the east wing; even in her panicked run, she’d noticed that some of them were cops, and the hand-gun was an RPD issue. Claire didn’t like the idea of touching any of the dead bodies, but running out of firepower was distinctly less desirable—particularly with Mr. X running around.

Claire walked toward the door and pushed it open, trying to get her thoughts organized as she stepped back into the dim hall. Leaving the office put a damper on her resolve; she had to suppress a shudder at the still vivid image of Mr. X as she closed the door behind her, suddenly feeling vulnerable again. She turned right and started back toward the library, deciding that she wouldn’t think about the giant unless she had to, wouldn’t dwell on the memory of those blank, inhuman eyes or the way he’d raised his terrible fist, as if driven to destroy anything in his way ...

. . . so knock it off already. Think about Sherry, think about getting some goddamn ammo or how to handle Irons, if you can find him. Think about trying to stay alive.

Just ahead, the dark wooden hall turned right again and Claire tried to steel herself against the task ahead; if memory served, there was a dead cop around the corner—

• like I can’t tell by the smell—

• and she’d have to search him. He hadn’t been too disgusting, at least, not that she’d noticed—

Claire turned the corner and froze, staring. Her stomach knotted, telling her she was in danger before her senses could. The body that she’d jumped over on the way to the S.T.A.R.S. office was now only a bloody, tangled mass, flesh and broken limbs and shredded uniform. The head was gone, although there was no way to tell if it had been taken away or just smashed into an unrecognizable pulp. It looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer or an axe to the corpse in the few moments since she’d passed it, beating it into a clotted smear.

But when, how, I didn’t hear anything—

Something moved. A shadow, soft and darting over the mashed remains some twenty feet in front of her, and at the same time, Claire heard a strange rasping sound, breathing—

• and she looked up, still not sure what she was seeing or hearing—that ragged breathing and the tick of talons on wood, the talons themselves, thick and curved, the claws of a creature that couldn’t exist. Big, the size of a full-grown man, but the resemblance ended there—and it was so impossible that she could only see it in pieces, her mind struggling to put them together. The inflamed, purplish flesh of the naked, long-limbed creature that clung to the ceiling. The puffed gray-white tissue of the partially exposed brain. The scar-rimmed holes where the eyes should have been.

• not seeing this—

The creature’s rounded head dropped back, the wide jaw opening, a ropy stream of dark drool pour-ing out and splattering over what was left of the cop. It extended its tongue, eely and pink, the rough surface shimmering wetly as it slithered out. And out. And out, the snaking tongue uncoiling and whipping from side to side, so long that it actually trailed through the ripped flesh of the corpse.

Still frozen, Claire watched in horrified disbelief as the incredible tongue snapped back up, flicking drop-lets of blood through the shadowy air. The entire process had taken only a second, but time had slowed to a crawl, Claire’s heart beating so fast that every-thing else was in slow motion—even the creature’s drop to the wooden floor, its body flipping in midair so that it landed in a crouch atop the mutilated cop.

The creature opened its mouth again and screamed—

• and Claire was finally able to move as the bizarre, hollow shriek erupted from the monster, able to point her weapon and fire. The thunder of nine-millimeter rounds drowned out the howl that echoed through the tight hallway, bam-bam-bam—

• and still screaming that chilling, trumpeting cry, the creature was thrown back, its claw-tipped arms flailing. Its spasming legs kicked up bloody chunks of the eviscerated body; Claire saw a ragged flap of scalp, one ear still attached, fly across the hall and smack into the wall with a wet slapping sound, sliding down—

• and the creature got its legs beneath it somehow and flopped forward in a boneless lunge. It spidered toward her, lightning fast, gripping the wood floor with its terrible claws and howling.

Claire fired again, unaware that she was also screaming as three more rounds hit the scuttling thing, ripping through the gray matter that protruded from its open skull. She was going to die, it would be on her in less than a second and its massive talons were only inches from her legs—

• and as suddenly as the attack had come, it was over. Every part of the sinewy body quivered and shook as liquid gray dribbled from its burbling head, the thick claws tapping wildly against the wood floor in a frantic tattoo. With a final whispering whine, the creature died. There was no mistaking it this time. She’d blasted through its brain, it wasn’t going to get up again.

She stared down at the monster, her shocked mind digging for something to relate it to, some animal or even a rumor of an animal that came close—but she gave it up after a few seconds, recognizing it as a lost cause. This was no natural creature, and as close as it was, she could finally smell it—the odor was not as pungent as the zombies’, it was a bitter, oily smell, somehow more chemical than animal. ., . . . and it could smell like chocolate-chip cookies, who gives a shit? Raccoon City’s got monsters, it’s time to stop being so goddamn surprised when you see one of them.

The chiding tone of her mind’s voice wasn’t partic-ularly convincing. As much as she wanted to feel brave and determined, to step over the monstrous creature and get on with things, she just stood for a moment—and for that moment, she thought very seriously about going back to the S.T.A.R.S. office, going inside, and locking the door behind her. She could hide, hide and wait for help, she could be

safe—

Decide, then. Do something, one way or another, stop this wavering and whining, because it’s not just you anymore. Will Sherry be safe? Do you want to survive at the cost of her life?

The moment passed. Claire took a careful step over the raw red flesh of the creature and crouched down next to the cop’s remains, using the muzzle of the handgun to push a torn piece of bloody uniform aside. She swallowed down bile as she poked through the rotten flesh and bone, working not to think about who the cop had been or how he had died.

Nothing, and she now had only seven bullets left—but she refused to panic, letting the disappointment fuel her determination instead. If she could search one bloody mess, she could search another. With a last look at the dead animal-thing, Claire stood and walked quickly toward the end of the corridor, her decision made: no hiding and no more running from the fear. At the very least, she could take a few of the monsters with her, raising Sherry’s chances of escape.

It would be better to die trying than not to try at all.

She wouldn’t waver again.

FlFfEEn

LEON FOUND ADA IN THE KENNEL, STRAINing to lever up the rusted manhole cover that the reporter had told them about. She’d turned up a crowbar from somewhere and had it wedged beneath the thick iron plate, her well-defined biceps lightly sheened with sweat as she worked the bar. She’d managed to raise the cover about an inch, but let it drop back into place as he walked in, the metallic clang loud in the cold, empty room.

Before he could say anything, she lay the crowbar on the cement floor and looked up at him with a strained half-smile, brushing at her rust-dirty hands. “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t think I’m strong enough to do this by myself. .. ”

He hadn’t been sure before, but the helpless look she gave him cinched it; she was playing him, or trying to. He’d known Ada for all of twenty minutes, but he doubted seriously that she’d ever been helpless about anything.

“Looks like you’re doing just fine,” he said, holster-ing the Magnum but not making any move toward the manhole. He crossed his arms, frowning slightly. He wasn’t angry, just curious.

“Besides, what’s the hurry? I thought you wanted to talk to the reporter. About John, your Umbrella

friend_” The woman-in-distress look melted away and her delicate features turned cool and hard, but

not in a bad way; it was as though she was letting her real self show, the strong and self-assured Ada he’d first met. Leon could tell that he’d surprised her by not rushing to her aid and was glad to see it; he had enough to worry about without being manipulated by a mysteri-ous stranger. She’d been very careful to avoid his questions, but it was time for Ms. Wong to explain a few things.

Ada stood up, meeting his gaze evenly. “You heard him—he wasn’t going to tell us anything. And with this place as dangerous as it is, I don’t really want to stand around waiting for him to develop a con-science ... ”

She dropped her gaze, her voice softening.”. . . and I don’t even know if John’s in Raccoon. But I do

know that he’s not here—and I want to leave before the station’s completely overrun.”

It sounded good, but for some reason, he had the feeling that she was holding something back. For a few seconds, he struggled to think of a polite way to get her to open up—then decided to hell with it; under the circumstances, social graces would have to be suspended.

“What’s going on, Ada? Do you know something that you’re not telling me?”

She looked at him again, and again, he had the feeling that he’d surprised her—but her cool, dark gaze was as unreadable as ever.

“I just want to get out of here,” she said, and the sincerity of her tone was impossible to deny. If he didn’t believe anything else she’d said, he had to believe that much.

And I wish it was that easy—but there’s Claire, and even Ben, our asshole friend, and God knows how many others. . . .

Leon shook his head. “I can’t leave. Like I said, I may be the only cop left around here. If there are still people in the building, I have to at least try to help them. And I think it’d be best if you came with me.” Ada gave him another one of her half-smiles. “I appreciate your concern, Leon, but I can take care of myself”

He didn’t doubt it—but he also didn’t want to see her abilities tested. Granted, he was pretty untested himself, but he’d been trained to deal with crisis situations, it was his job.

And be honest with yourself—you lost Claire, you couldn’t help Branagh, and Ben Bertolucci could give a rat’s ass for your protection skills; you don’t want to fail with Ada on top of all that. And you don’t want to be alone.

Ada seemed to know what he was thinking. Before he could come up with a convincing argument, she stepped forward and put one slender hand on his arm, the humor fading from her bright eyes.

“I know you want to do your job here, but you said it yourself—we have to find a way out of Raccoon, try and get outside help. And the sewers are probably the best chance we’ve got. . .”

The light, gentle touch surprised him—and sent an electric flutter through his belly, an unexpected flush of warmth that left him feeling confused and uncer-tain. He managed to keep his reaction from showing, but just barely.

Ada continued, frowning thoughtfully. “How about this—help me with the manhole cover, and let’s see what’s down there. If it looks dangerous, I’ll come with you ... but if it’s not bad—well, we can talk about what to do next.”

He wanted to protest, but the truth was, he couldn’t make her do anything she didn’t want to do—and he wanted very much for her to know that he wasn’t some overbearing macho type, that he was receptive to compromise . . .

. . . and does the name “John” ring a bell? This isn’t a date for Chrissake, stop thinking with your hor-mones.

Feeling awkward even thinking about it with her hand still on his arm, Leon stepped away, nodding

briskly. Together, they crouched down next to the manhole. Leon picked up the crowbar and jammed one end beneath the lid; as he pulled back, Ada pushed on the bar, and with a heavy grating sound the thick metal plate came up. Leon put his back into it and heaved the lid to one side, clearing the opening—

• and both of them recoiled back from the smell that bellowed out of the dark hole, a choking, dark stench of blood and piss and vomit.

“Gah, what is that?” Leon coughed.

Ada sat back on her heels, one hand pressed to her mouth. “The bodies from the garage, they must have dumped them down here—“ Before he could ask what she was talking about, a scream of pure terror echoed through the basement halls, filtering through the closed door. The cry went on and on, a man’s voice, the panicked scream suddenly changing to a gurgling shriek of pain. The reporter.

Leon locked gazes with Ada, saw the same startled realization flash across her face—and then they were both up and running, pulling out their weapons and sprinting through the door before the echoes died. I left him, I shouldn’t have left him—

They ran down the corridor for the cell block, guilt driving Leon to run faster than he thought he could. Someone or something had gotten to Bertolucci—and had passed right behind his back to do it. Sherry stood in Mr. Irons’s office, rubbing at her good luck pendant and wishing that Claire would come back. She had crawled through a dozen dusty tunnels to get away from the monster and to lead it away from Claire, and was pretty sure it had worked—she hadn’t heard it again, and had come back to find that Claire had left; if the monster had found her, she would have been dead and ripped apart.

But she’s not here. Nobody is. . . .

Sherry sat on the edge of a low table in the middle of the room, wondering what she should do. She’d gotten used to being alone, and hadn’t even realized how lonely she’d been—but meeting Claire had changed that. Sherry wanted to see her again, she wanted to be with other people, she wanted her parents so bad that it made her ache. Even Mr. Irons would be okay, although Sherry didn’t like him; she’d only met him a couple of times but he was weird, showy and fake—and his office was creepy besides. Still, she’d gladly put up with him if it meant she didn’t have to be alone anymore. . . .

Footsteps. In the hall outside of the office. Sherry stood up and ran to the open door that led back to the armor room, hoping it was Claire and ready to sprint for cover if it wasn’t. She ducked around the door frame and held her breath, staring at the stuffed tiger in the hall and silently praying. The outer door opened and closed. Muffled steps on the carpet, moving slowly, and she tensed to run, at the same time trying to muster up enough courage to sneak a look—

“Sherry?”

Claire!

“I’m here!”

She ran back into the office and there was Claire, her whole face lit up with a beaming smile. Sherry flew into her open arms, so happy to see her that she wanted to cry.

“I was looking for you,” Claire said, holding her tightly. “Don’t run off like that again, okay?” Claire knelt

in front of her, still smiling—but Sherry could see the worry behind the smile and in her cool gray eyes. “I’m sorry,” Sherry said. “I had to, or the monster would have come.”

“What does it look like?” Claire asked, her smile fading. “Does it look—kind of red, with claws?”

Sherry swallowed heavily. “The inside-out men!

You saw one, didn’t you?”

Incredibly, Claire grinned, shaking her head. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I saw, an inside-out man . . . good description.”

She looked at Sherry more seriously, frowning.

“ ‘Men’? There are more of them?”

Sherry nodded. “Yes, but they aren’t anything like the monster. I only saw him once, from behind, but he’s a man, a giant man—“ Claire seemed excited. “Bald? Wearing a long coat?”

“No, he had hair, brown hair. And one of his arms was all screwed up, a lot longer than the other one.” Claire sighed. “Terrific. Raccoon’s got something for everyone, sounds like . .”

She reached out and took Sherry’s hand, squeezing it. “. . . and that’s all the more reason that you should stay with me. You’ve done a really good job of taking care of yourself, and you’ve been very brave—but until we find your parents, I feel like it’s my job for now, to watch out for you. And if the monster comes, j ’H_ril kick its ass, okay?”

Sherry laughed, surprised into it. She liked that Claire didn’t talk down to her. She nodded, and Claire squeezed her hand again.

“Good. So we’ve got zombies, inside-out men, and a monster. And a big bald guy . . . Sherry, do you know what happened to Raccoon? How this all got started? Anything you can tell me, anything at all—it could be important.”

Sherry frowned, thinking. “Well, there were a bunch of murders last May, or June I think—like ten people got killed. And then they stopped, but then maybe a week ago, somebody got attacked.” Claire nodded encouragingly. “Okay. Did more people start getting attacked, or ... what did the police do?”

Sherry shook her head, wishing she could be more helpful. “I don’t know. Right before that girl got attacked, my mother called from work really upset, and told me that I couldn’t leave the house. Mrs. Willis—that’s our next-door neighbor—she came over and cooked dinner for me, and that’s how I heard about that girl. Mom called again the next day, and told me that she and Dad were stuck at the plant and wouldn’t be home for a while—and then like three days ago, she called again and told me to come here. I went to see if Mrs. Willis would come with me, but her house was dark and empty. I guess things had already gotten pretty bad by then.”

Claire was staring at her intently. “You were alone all that time? Even before you got to the station?” Sherry nodded. “Well yeah, but I stay alone a lot. My parents are both scientists; their work is impor-tant, and sometimes they can’t stop in the middle of what they’re doing. And my mother always says that I’m very self-sufficient, when I want to be.” “Do you know what kind of work your parents do?

At Umbrella?” Claire was still watching her closely. “They develop cures for things, for diseases,”

Sher-ry said proudly. “And make medicines, like serums that hospitals use. ...”

She trailed off, noticing that Claire seemed dis-tracted suddenly, her gaze far away. It was a look she had seen plenty of times before, on both of her parents’ faces—and it meant that they weren’t really listening anymore. But as soon as she stopped talking, Claire refocused on her, reaching out to pat her on the shoulder—and for some stupid reason, that made Sherry want to cry again.

Because she’s listening to me. Because she wants to watch out for me now.

“Your mother’s right,” Claire said gently, “you’re very self-sufficient, and that you’ve made it this far means that you’re also very strong. That’s good, because we’re both going to have to be strong, to make it out of here.”

Sherry felt her eyes go wide. “What do you mean? Leave the station? But there are zombies all over the place, and I don’t know where my parents are, what if they need help or they’re looking for me—“ “Sweetie, I’m sure your folks are just fine,” Claire said quickly. “They’re probably still at the plant, hiding and safe, just like you were—waiting for people to come from outside of the city, to, to make everything better—“ “You mean kill everything,” Sherry said. “I’m twelve, you know, I’m not a baby.”

Claire smiled. “Sorry. Yeah, to kill everything. But until the good guys come, we’re on our own. And the best thing we can do, the smartest thing, is to get out of their way—to get as far out of their way as possible. You’re right, the streets aren’t safe, but maybe we can get a car. . . ”

It was Claire’s turn to trail off. She stood up and walked toward the big desk at the far end of the office, looking around as she went.

“Maybe Chief Irons left his car keys here, or another weapon, something we can use—“ Claire saw something on the floor behind the desk. She crouched down and Sherry hurried after her, as much to stay close as to see what she’d found. She already knew that she didn’t want to lose her again, no matter what else happened.

“There’s blood here,” Claire said softly, so softly that Sherry thought she hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“So?”

Claire looked up at the plain tan wall, frowning, then back down at the big drying splotch of red on the floor. “It’s still wet, for one thing. And see the way it’s just kind of cut off? There should be some on the

wall here_” She rapped on the dark wood trim that lined the wall, then on the wall itself. There was an

obvious difference; a dull thump from the trim, but the wall sounded hollow.

“Is there a room back there?” Sherry asked. “I don’t know, it sounds like it. And it would explain where he took .. . where he took off to earli-j er. Chief Irons.”

She glanced up at Sherry as she started to feel along the baseboards, running her hands up the wall and pushing at it. “Sherry, look around the desk, see if you can find like a switch or a lever. My guess is it would be hidden somewhere, maybe in one of the drawers. . . ”

Sherry started to move behind the desk—and tripped, her foot sliding on a handful of pencils that she hadn’t seen. She grabbed at the desktop, trying to catch her balance, but still came down pretty hard on her bare knees.

“Ow!”

Claire was next to her right away, putting an arm around her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I just—hey! Look!”

Her bruised knees forgotten, Sherry pointed at the switch under the top drawer of the desk, set into a small metal plate. It looked like a light switch, but it had to be for the secret door, she just knew it.

I found it!

Claire reached out and flipped the switch—and behind them, a section of the wall a few feet across slid smoothly upwards, disappearing into the ceiling and exposing a dimly lit room lined with oversized j bricks. Cool, damp air breezed into the office; it was a secret passage, just like in the movies.

Together, they stood and stepped toward the open-ing, Claire holding Sherry back with one arm until she’d looked first. The small room was totally empty—three brick walls and a stained wood floor, and only about half the size of the office. The fourth wall was dominated by a big old-fashioned elevator gate, the kind that pushed to one side.

“Are we going to take it?” Sherry asked. She was excited but nervous, too.

Claire had taken her gun out. She crouched down next to Sherry and smiled—but it wasn’t a happy smile, and Sherry knew what was coming before Claire said a word.

“Sweetie, I think it would be safest if I went and looked around first, and you stayed here—“ “But you said we should stay together! You said we could find a car and leave! What if the monster comes back and you’re not here, or you get killed?” Claire hugged her, but Sherry felt almost sick with helpless anger. She was going to tell her not to worry, that the monster wouldn’t come, that nothing bad would happen—and then she was going to leave anyway.

Stupid grownup lies—

Claire leaned back, smoothing Sherry’s hair away from her face. “I don’t blame you for being scared. I’m scared, too. This is a bad situation—and hon-estly, I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I want to do the right thing by you, and that means that I’m not going to take you into a situation where you could get hurt, not if I can help it.”

Sherry swallowed back tears, trying again. “But I want to come with you . . . what if you don’t come back?”

“I’m going to come back,” Claire said firmly, “I promise. And if—if I don’t, I want you to hide again, like before. Somebody will come, help is going to come soon, and they’ll find you.”

At least she was being honest; Sherry didn’t like it, not at all, but at least there was that—and from the look on her face, Sherry could see that there was nothing she could say to change her mind. She could be a baby about it, or she could accept it. “Be careful,” she whispered, and Claire hugged her again before standing and moving toward the eleva-tor. She pushed a button next to the gate and there was a low, soft hum; after a few seconds an elevator car rose into view, coming to a gentle stop. Claire pulled

the gate open and stepped inside, turning for a last look at Sherry.

“Stay here, sweetie,” she said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Sherry forced herself to nod—and Claire let the gate close. She touched something inside the elevator and the car went down, her smiling, strong face descending out of sight, leaving Sherry by herself in the cold, dark passage.

Sherry sat down on the dusty floor and hugged her knees close to her body, rocking herself slowly. Claire was brave and smart, she’d be back soon, she had to come back soon. . . .

“I want my mommy,” Sherry whispered, but there was nobody to hear. She was alone again, the thing she wanted least of all.

But I’m strong. I’m strong, and I can wait. She rested her chin on one knee, touching the necklace her mother had given her for good luck, and started to wait for Claire to come back.

SixfEEn

ANNETTE BIRKIN SAT IN THE LABORATORY

monitor room, exhausted, staring up at the wall of video screens centered over the surveillance console. She’d been there for what felt like years, waiting for William to appear, and was starting to think that he never would. She’d give it a little longer—but if she didn’t see him soon, she’d have to do another search. Goddamn technology . . .

It was a brand-new system, less than a month old—twenty-five screens with a channel control that should have allowed her to see any and every part of the facility. A brilliant security advance—except only eleven of the screens still worked at all, and over half of those would only show static, an endless dance of electric snow. Of the five she could still get a clear picture from, all she could see—all there was to see—were dead, rotting bodies and the occasional Re3, either feasting or sleeping.. . .

“Lickers. You called them lickers, because of their tongues. . .”

She thought she’d been past the worst of the pain, but the lonely sound of her own voice in the cold, cavernous chamber and the realization that there would be no answer—that there would never be an answer again—brought on a fresh, knifing wave of grief. William was gone, he was gone and she was talking to no one at all.

Annette lowered her head to the console, closing her weary eyes. At least there were no more tears; she’d wept an ocean of them in the days since Um-brella had come for the G-Virus, but was simply too spent to cry anymore. Now there was only pain, interspersed with fits of violent, helpless fury over what Umbrella had done.

Another month, maybe two, and we would have given it to them. We would have turned it over without a fight, and William would have made the executive board and we would have been happy. Everyone would have been happy—

There was a faint squealing from one of the muted security screens. Annette looked up, hoping and dreading at once—but it was just a licker, one floor up in the surgical bay. It had dropped from its ceiling roost to snack on one of the techs, howling stupidly to itself as it ripped into the corpse’s guts. The dead

man looked like Don Weller, one of the chemical plant go-betweens, but she couldn’t tell for certain; he was almost as mutilated and inhuman looking as the Re3 that was eating him.

She watched the licker feed, watched the small screen but didn’t really see; her mind wandered, running over what was left for her to do. She’d already wiped all of the computers and locked in the countdown codes; the lab was ready, and her escape route was secured. But she couldn’t finish things until she saw him again, saw that he was back in the Umbrella facility. Destroying the lab wouldn’t solve anything if he

wasn’t in the blast zone; they would find him, and extract the virus from his blood......and Umbrella

won’t have it. I’ll die before I let them have it, so help me God.

Her only consolation in all of this mad, horrible affair was that Umbrella hadn’t managed to get their greedy hands on William’s synthesis. They hadn’t and they never would. Everything that had gone into the creation of the G-Virus would be buried under a thousand burning tons of stone and wood, along with William and all of the monsters they had created for the company. She would go into hiding for a while, take some time to heal, to consider her options—and then she would sell the G-Virus to the competition. Umbrella was the biggest, but they weren’t the only conglomerate working on bioweapons research—and when she was through with them, they wouldn’t be the biggest anymore. It wasn’t much of a revenge, but it was all she had left.

“Except for Sherry,” Annette whispered, and the thought of their young daughter made her heart ache, a different pain but pain nonetheless. Since the day Sherry had been born, Annette had meant to spend more time with her, to focus on the child instead of on her part in William’s brilliant work. And yet some-how the years had slipped by, William’s promotions had kept coming up, the work had grown ever more interesting and valuable—and although both she and William had made promises to themselves and each other that they would make more of an effort to develop their family life, they had continued to put it off.

And now it’s too late. We’ll never be a family, we’ll never be parents together. All that time wasted, slaving for a company that sold us out in the end. . . .It was too late; there was no point in mourning what could have been. All she could do now was make sure that Umbrella wouldn’t get anything else from the Birkin family. William was gone, but there was still Sherry; that part of him would go on, and Annette meant to finally become the mother she should have been all along. Of course she’d have to wait until things cooled down before she could collect Sherry, at least a few months, but the girl would be safe; the

cops would send her to live with William’s sister, it was in both of their wills......unless Irons is still

alive. That fat, greedy bas-tard could find a way to screw even that up if given half a chance.

She hoped he was dead; even if he wasn’t directly responsible for Umbrella’s awareness of the G-Virus, Brian Irons was a disgusting, arrogant man with the morals of a sea slug. After years of loyalty to the company, he’d been bought out for a measly hundred thousand dollars. Even William had been surprised, and he’d had an even lower opinion of the police chief than she had....

On the screen, the Re3 had finished its meal. All that was left of the dead man was an empty shell, arched, bloody ribs, and a faceless cup of skull, the surely vibrant colors lost to the video’s flat shades of gray. The licker scrabbled out of view, trailing sticky fluids in its wake. Thanks to the T-Virus, all of the reptile series were efficient killers, although the 3 s had design flaws—the protruding cerebrum was the most obvious, but they also had a ridiculously high meta-bolic rate; keeping them fed had been a constant hassle.

Not a problem anymore. Plenty of canton to go around—and lucky them, they’II get a chance for a hot dinner soon enough. .. .

Annette felt drained of energy, and didn’t want to go back out into the facility—but she couldn’t just keep hoping that William would happen by one of the working cameras. She’d heard him up on level three, perhaps two days before, but hadn’t seen him in almost twice as long; she couldn’t keep waiting. Umbrella’s people were probably already working on a way in—even with the mainframe wiped, there were other ways to get past the doors—

• and William may have found a way out. I can’t keep denying it, no matter how much I want to. There was an abandoned factory west of the lab, a shipping company that had been bought up by Um-brella to ensure that the underground levels would stay secret; it was how Umbrella had managed to build the complex in the first place without arousing suspicion, hiding equipment and materials in the factory’s warehouses and using the heavy machinery lift to transport them. Although the entrances from the factory had still been sealed off the last time she’d checked, there was a slim chance that William had gotten through—and if he could get to the factory, he could get into the sewers.

Annette forced herself to stand up, ignoring the cramps in her legs and back as she picked up the handgun on the console. She didn’t know much about guns, although she’d figured out how to use one quickly enough, after—

• after they came for the G-Virus, the men in the gas masks, shooting and running—and William, poor William dying in a puddle of blood and I didn ‘t see the syringe until it was too late—

She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to push that terrible memory aside, trying to forget about the incident that had taken William from her and turned Raccoon into a city of the dead. It didn’t matter anymore. The journey ahead wouldn’t be a pleasant one, and she had to concentrate. Escaped Re3s, first-and second-stage infected humans, the botany experi-ments, the arachnid series—she could run into any of the T-Virus carriers, not to mention whomever Um-brella had managed to send.

And William. My husband, my beloved—the first human G-Virus carrier, who isn’t really human any-more.

She’d been wrong to think that she had no more tears inside. Annette stood in the middle of the vast, sterile room five floors beneath the surface of Rac-coon and wept lost, racking sobs that didn’t even begin to touch the pain of her loneliness. Umbrella would be sorry. Once she could be sure that William was beyond their reach, she was going to destroy their precious facility, she was going to take the G-Virus and run, she was going to make sure that they understood how badly they’d screwed up—and God help anyone who tried to stop her.

SEVEnfEEn

ADA RAN INTO THE CELL BLOCK ONLY A STEP

behind Leon, just in time to see the reporter stumble out of his cage and fall to the floor. “Help him!” Leon shouted, and ran past Bertolucci to check out the cell. Ada stopped in front of the gasping reporter but ignored the command, waiting to see if whatever had gotten to him was going to spring out of the open cell—

• he was behind bars, how did this happen—

She waited, weapon pointed after Leon as he leapt in front of the open cell, her heart pounding—and saw the bewilderment on his youthful face, the open surprise. The way his gaze searched the cell told her that it was empty. Unless the attacker was invis-ible . . .

Not a chance. Don’t even start thinking like that, don’t let it get to you.

Ada knelt next to the reporter, taking in immedi-ately that he was in a bad way—dying bad. He’d crumpled into a half-sitting position, his head against the bars of the cell adjacent to his. He was still breathing, but it wouldn’t be long before he stopped. Ada had seen the look before, the far-seeing gaze and the trembling, the pallor—but what she didn’t see was how, and that scared her. There were no wounds. It had to be a heart attack, maybe a stroke—

• but that scream.

“Ben? Ben, what happened?”

His flickering gaze fixed on her face, and she saw that the corners of his mouth were cracked and bleeding. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a rasping, unintelligible croak. Leon crouched down next to them, looking as confused as she felt. He shook his head at her, an unspoken answer to her unasked question; there was apparently no sign of what had happened.

Ada looked down at Bertolucci and tried again.

“What was it, Ben? Can you tell us what happened?” The reporter’s shaking hands crawled up his body, resting across his chest. With a visible effort, he managed to whisper a single word.

“. . . window. . . ”

Ada wasn’t reassured. The cell’s “window” was hardly a foot across, maybe six inches wide, and set eight feet off the floor—nothing more than a ventila-tion hole that opened into the parking garage. Noth-ing could have gotten through—at least nothing that she’d heard of or read about, and that meant that there were dangers she wasn’t prepared against. Bertolucci was still trying to speak. Both Ada and Leon leaned closer, straining to catch his painful whispers.

“. . . chest. Burns, it... burns. . . ”

Ada relaxed just a bit. He’d seen or heard some-thing outside of the cell, something that had kicked off a massive coronary; that, she could accept. A pisser for the journalist, but it would save her the trouble of killing him herself. . . .

He reached out suddenly and grasped her forearm, staring up at her with an intensity that surprised her. His grip was weak, but there was desperation in his wet eyes—desperation and some frustrated sorrow that inspired not a little guilt for what she’d been thinking.

“I never told . . . about Irons,” he breathed, obvi-ously struggling to hang on to life, to get it all out.

“He’s—working for Umbrella ... all this time. The zombies—are Umbrella, research . . . and he covered up the murders but I couldn’t—prove it all, yet... was going to be my—exclusive.”

Bertolucci closed his braised-looking eyelids, breath-ing shallowly as his fingers fell away from her arm, and she felt a surge of pity for him in spite of herself. The poor dumb jerk; his big secret was that Umbrella was into bioweapons and that Irons was on the take. It would have been a big scoop, too, but apparently he hadn’t even been able to get any hard evidence. He doesn’t know dick about the G-Virus, he never did—and he’s going to die regardless. Talk about a shit deal.

“Jesus,” Leon said softly. “Chief Irons_” Ada had all but forgotten how clueless the young cop was.

He was obviously new, but a couple of times he’d seemed so perceptive that she’d been taken aback; the kid wasn’t just a testosterone case, there was definitely something going on upstairs—

• knock it off already, he’s not much younger than you. The reporter’s about to kick and you need to be on your way, not worrying about Officer Friendly—

Bertolucci spasmed suddenly, his hands clutching at his chest as he moaned, a sharp, tortured cry of agony. His back arched, his fingers hooked into claws—

• and the moan went liquid as blood started to stream from his mouth in a burbling gout. Choking and shaking, Bertolucci’s limbs convulsed violently, droplets of crimson spraying out with each racking cough—

• and Ada saw red blossom across his rumpled white shirt beneath his scrabbling hands and heard the thick, wet crack of breaking bone. She leapt back as Leon grabbed for the reporter’s hands, not sure what was happening but absolutely positive that it was not a heart attack—

• holy Christ what IS this?

All at once, Bertolucci went limp, his eyes rolled back and fixed, sightless. Blood still oozed from his cracked lips and there was a sound, a horrible sound of meat being torn, and under the stained fabric of his shirt, something moved.

“Get back!” Ada shouted, pointing her Beretta at the dead reporter, and in the split-second it took her to aim, a thing erupted from Bertolucci’s bloody chest. A thing the size of a big man’s fist, a gore-drenched thing that opened a tiny black hole of a mouth and squealed shrilly, revealing nubs of sharp red teeth. It wriggled out of the corpse with a whip-ping manta’s tail, splashing the cold cement with shreds of wet tissue and gut.

Lashing against the cooling flesh of the reporter, it poured from the body in a gush of blood and onto the floor—and took off like a shot for the open gate back into the hall, propelling itself with its snaking tail and legs that Ada couldn’t see, smearing a red path be-hind it.

It was out the door before she even remembered that she was holding a gun; for the first time since she’d come to Raccoon, since ever, she had been so completely shocked that she hadn’t thought to react. A chest-bursting parasitic creature, straight out of a sci-fi movie. . . .

“Was that—did you see—“ Leon fumbled breath-lessly.

“I saw it,” Ada said softly, cutting him off. She turned and looked down at Bertolucci, at his face, frozen in a bloody contortion of anguish, and at the gaping wet cavity just below his sternum. His mouth, cracked at the corners. . . .

He’d been implanted with the creature—by what, she didn’t know, and she didn’t want to know. What she wanted was to get the mission wrapped, as quickly as possible, and then get as far away from Raccoon City as she could. In fact, she thought that she’d never wanted anything quite so badly. When she’d first realized that there had been a T-Virus incident, she’d expected to have to deal with some unpleasant organ-isms. But the thought of having one of them forced or forcing its way down her throat, nestling inside of her body like some slick, aberrant fetus before eating its way out. . . if that wasn’t the most horrible thing she could think of, it ran a close second.

She looked at Leon, giving up any pretense of trying to be reasonable. She was going to the lab, and it wasn’t open to discussion.

“I’m getting out of here,” she said, and without waiting for a response, she turned and walked briskly toward the gate, careful not to step on the glistening trail of blood that the tiny monster had created.

“Wait! Look, I think—Ada? Hey_”

She stepped into the corridor, weapon raised, but the creature was gone. The blood trail petered out less than halfway down the hall—but she saw that they’d left the door to the kennel open—

• and the manhole cover’s off. Terrific.

Leon caught up to her before she’d gone more than a few steps. He stood in front of her, blocking her path, and for just a moment, Ada thought he was going to try to physically stop her.

Don’t do it. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.

“Ada, please don’t go,” Leon said, not a command but a plea. “I—when I got to Raccoon, I met this girl, and I think she’s in the station somewhere. If you could help me find her, the three of us could leave together. We’d stand a much better chance—“ “Sorry, Leon, but it’s a free goddamn country. You do what you have to, and good luck—but I’m not staying. I’ve had enough. If—when I get out, I’ll send help.”

She started to push past him, hoping it wouldn’t come to violence and wishing that she could tell him not to get in her way—how dangerous it would be for him to try—when Leon surprised her yet again. “Then I’m coming with you,” he said. He met her gaze evenly, his own unflinching and resolute—and scared. “I’m not going to let you do it alone. I don’t want anyone else—I don’t want you to get hurt.” Ada stared at him, not sure what to say. Now that Bertolucci was dead, she didn’t want to have to ditch Leon in the sewers; it wouldn’t be hard, considering how extensive the system was . . . but he was just so goddamn nice, so determined to be helpful, that she was starting to—to not want to have to do anything bad to him. Things would be a lot easier if he was just some asshole on a machismo kick. . . .

Okay, so blow your cover. Tell him you’re a private agent working to steal the G-Virus, and you don’t want company; tell him about the relief you felt when you realized the reporter was about to die, or how you don’t have a problem with killing, if it’s for a good cause—like getting paid. See how nice and helpful he is after that.

Not an option; neither was trying to talk him out of coming along, it wouldn’t make sense. And there was some part of her, some part that she didn’t want to admit to, that wanted very much not to be alone. Seeing that thing that had popped out of Bertolucci had shaken her, it had left her feeling that she wasn’t as invulnerable as she liked to think.

So let him come, get to the lab and find a safe place to leave him there. No harm, no foul.

Leon was watching her closely, studying her—wait-ing for her approval.

“Let’s go,” she said, and the grin he gave her, though winning, made her feel even more uncomfort-able. Without another word, they walked toward the kennel, Ada wondering what the hell she was

doing—and whether or not she was still capable of doing whatever it took to get the job done.

Claire stood in front of a medieval door at the very end of the dark, dungeon-like hallway that the eleva-tor had taken her to. The station had been chilly, but the icy damp of this stone hall made the station seem like summer; it was like she’d descended into some ancient, haunted castle straight out of the Middle Ages.

She took a deep breath, trying to decide how to go in; she was pretty sure that Irons wouldn’t appreciate a surprise visit, but the idea of knocking seemed ludicrous—not to mention dangerous. There were torches burning in sconces on either side of the heavy wood door, the door itself belted with strips of rusting metal—and if she’d had any doubt before that Irons was crazy, the sight of the twin sputtering torches and the feel of cold, quiet dread that suffused the corridor itself had wiped her uncertainty out.

A secret tunnel, a hidden room complete with mood-lighting . . . what sane person would want to hang out down here? It wasn’t the disaster that did it—Irons must have been nuts way before the Umbrella acci-dent . . .

Another certainty, although she didn’t have any proof—but when Sherry had told her about what her parents did for a living, and what had happened just prior to her coming to the station, something had clicked. Umbrella worked with diseases, and the population of Raccoon had definitely come down with a bad case of something. There must have been some kind of an accident, a spill that had released the strange zombie plague. . . .

Quit stalling.

Claire bit at her lip, not sure what she should do. She didn’t doubt that Irons was down here some-where, and she did not want to run into him again; maybe she should go back up, get Sherry, and try to find another way out. Just because the area was secret didn’t mean that it was some kind of an escape route. Still stalling, and Sherry is up there by herself. And you’ve got a gun, remember?

A gun with very little ammo. If this was Irons’s hidden lair, maybe he kept weapons inside ... or maybe it was just another corridor, one that led even deeper into the bowels of the station. Either way, wondering about it was telling her exactly jack shit. Claire put her hand on the latch, took another deep breath, and pushed it open, the heavy door swinging in slowly on well-oiled hinges. She stepped back, pointing the handgun—

Jesus.

An empty room, as dank and unwelcoming as the corridor—but with furnishings and a decor that made her skin crawl. A single naked bulb hung down from the ceiling, illuminating the creepiest chamber she’d ever seen. There was a table in the middle of the room, stained and battered, a hacksaw and other cutting utensils scattered on top; a dented metal bucket and a mop, slopped against one water-stained wall, next to a portable basin with dried red patches inside; shelves, laden with dusty bottles—and what looked like human bones, polished and pale, set out like macabre trophies. That, and the smell—a thick chemical reek, sharp and acidic, that only just cov-ered a darker smell. A smell like insanity. Even looking into the room made her want to be sick; “nuts” was maybe the understatement of the year for the police chief—but there was nobody home, and that meant that there could be another secret passage somewhere inside. At the very least, she had to check for weapons.

Swallowing, Claire stepped into the room, glad that she hadn’t brought Sherry with her; looking at the private little torture chamber was going to give her nightmares, it was nothing to expose a child to—

“Freeze, little girl, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

Claire froze. Every muscle in her body froze as Irons started to laugh from behind her, from behind the door where she hadn’t thought to look. Oh my God, oh, God, oh, Sherry I’m so sorry—

Irons’s deep chuckle rose into the hearty, gleeful laughter of a madman, and Claire understood that she was going to die.

ElGHtEEH

TRYING NOT TO BREATHE TOO DEEPLY, LEON

reached the bottom of the metal ladder and turned around quickly, aiming the Magnum into the thick gloom. Murky water sloshed over his boots, and as his eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw the source of the terrible smell.

Parts of it, anyway. . . .

The subbasement tunnel stretching out in front of him was littered with body parts, human corpses that had been torn into pieces. Limbs and heads and torsos were strewn randomly through the stone pas-sage, lapped at gently by the few inches of dark water that covered the floor.

“Leon? How is it?” Ada’s voice floated down from the circle of light above the ladder, echoing hollowly around him. Leon didn’t answer, his shocked gaze fixed on the terrible scene, his brain trying to add up the shredded parts and come up with a number. How many? How many people?

Too many to count. He saw a faceless head, the long hair streaming around it in a cloud. A heavy woman’s decapitated trunk, one breast bobbing above the rippling darkness. An arm encased in the tatters of a cop’s dress shirt. A bare leg, still wearing a sneaker. A curled hand, the fingers slick and white. A dozen? Twenty?

“Leon?” Ada’s tone had sharpened.

“It’s—it looks okay,” he called, struggling to keep his voice from cracking. “Nothing moving.” “I’m coming down.”

He stepped away from the ladder to give her room, remembering something she’d said before, something about bodies being dumped. . . .

Ada stepped off the bottom rung, splashing into the dark tunnel. His eyes had adjusted well enough to see a look of disgust cross her delicate features—disgust and something like sadness.

“There was an attack in the garage,” she said softly.

“Fourteen or fifteen people died. . . ”

She trailed off, frowning, and took a step past him to get a closer look at the severed and mutilated remains. When she spoke again, she sounded worried. “I didn’t see the attack, but I don’t think they were torn up like this.”

She looked up, scanning the roof of the tunnel, gripping her nine-millimeter tightly. Leon followed her gaze, but only saw algae-thick stone. Ada shook her head, looking back down at the gently rippling sea of broken flesh.

“The—zombies didn’t do this. Something got to these people after they were killed.”

Leon felt a chill go up his spine. That was about the last thing he wanted to hear, standing in the humid, stinking dark and surrounded by savaged bodies. “So it’s not safe down here. We should head back up and—“ Ada started forward, stepping through the tangled limbs, the sound of her careful, sloshing movements seeming very loud in the otherwise silent tunnel. Damn, does she ignore everybody, or is it just me? Watching his step, Leon followed, reaching out with his free hand to touch her shoulder. “At least let me go first, okay?”

“Fine,” she said, sounding almost but not quite exasperated. “Lead the way.”

He stepped in front of her, and they started forward again, Leon trying to divide his attention between the darkness ahead and the sodden pieces of flesh and bone underfoot. Just ahead, the tunnel turned to the right, and there was some light reflected off the oily surface of the water; the passage was clearer, too, with not as many bodies.

Leon paused just long enough to unshoulder the Remington, checking to make sure he’d chambered a round. Whatever had gotten to the corpses didn’t seem to be around, but he didn’t want to be unpre-pared if it came back.

Ada waited without speaking, though he could feel her impatience—not for the first time, he wondered if there was more to her story than she’d told him. He was scared, and he was also cold and tired and afraid for Claire, who might still be wandering the station—he didn’t even know if Claire was still alive; but he hadn’t felt right about letting Ada walk into a bad situation on her own.

Ada, on the other hand . . . she was as calm and controlled as a veteran soldier, expressing nothing but a kind of irritable eagerness to get on with things—and if she appreciated his presence at all, she was taking great pains not to show it. It wasn’t that he needed or wanted her gratitude—

• but wouldn’t most people be happy to have a cop along? Even a rookie?

Maybe not, and it wasn’t the time or place to start asking questions. Leon shut down his thinking and started moving again, stepping gingerly over a chewed-up chunk of flesh that he couldn’t identify. “Stop,” Ada whispered sharply. “Listen.”

Leon tensed, Remington in one hand, Magnum in the other. He tilted his head, straining to hear, but there was only a distant, hollow drip of water—

• and a soft thumping. A rapid but random sound, like padded hammers on a padded surface. Whatever it was, it was getting closer, coming toward them from where the tunnel turned up ahead.

Why isn’t it splashing, why don’t we hear water—? Leon backed up a step, raising both weapons slightly, remembering how Ada had looked at the ceiling before—

• and saw it, saw it and felt his heart stop in midbeat. A spider the size of a big dog, skittering over the wet stones halfway up the inner wall, its bristling, hairy legs tapping—

• and then there was a series of deafening explo-sions next to his right ear, bam-bam-bam-bam, the muzzle flash from Ada’s Beretta strobing the hellish tunnel as she fired. The booming echoes pounded through the dark as the giant, impossible arachnid dropped from the wall, splashing into the inky water. It crawled toward them, wounded, dragging two of its multiple legs through the murk behind it, dark fluids spilling out from its grotesquely rounded body. It humped itself over a human head, the mutilated skull rolling out from beneath its swollen, pulsing abdomen, and Leon could see its shining black eyes, each the size of a ping-pong ball—

• and he squeezed the trigger on the Remington, not even feeling the kick of the thundering blast, his entire focus on the inconceivable arachnid. The round hit it squarely, blowing its alien face into a thousand wet pieces. The spider flipped over backwards with a skidding splash, its thick legs quivering, curling in over its furred body.

His ears ringing, his heart pounding, Leon cham-bered another round, his mind telling him that he had not just blown away a spider that big, the physics was wrong, it couldn’t happen because it would collapse under its own weight—

• Ada pushed past him, running ahead, shouting back to him. “Come on, there could be more coming!”

Leon took off after her, forced by Ada’s reckless behavior to put his shock on hold. He sprinted through the dark, jumping over the disturbed and gently rocking hunks of flesh, past the closed dead spider that would never have existed in the reality he’d known before Raccoon.

“Drop your weapon,” Irons commanded, and the girl did so, hesitating for only a second. The Browning clattered to the floor, and Irons had to resist the urge to laugh again, scarcely able to credit how stupidly she’d acted. The Umbrella assassin had obviously grown arrogant, walking into his Sanctuary as if she owned the place—and her smug, inflated conceit had cost her the game.

“Turn around, slow—and keep your hands where I can see them,” he said, still grinning. Oh, what a gloriously easy conquest! Umbrella had underesti-mated him for the last time.

Again, the girl did as he asked, pivoting slowly, her hands empty and open. The look on her face was priceless, her aquiline features fixed in a mask of fear and shock; she hadn’t expected this, she thought it would be a simple task to take out Brian Irons. After all, he was a broken man, a shadow of his former self, his city, his life taken away—

“Mistaken, weren’t you?” he said, feeling the hu-mor leak out of the situation, feeling the anger stir again. He kept the VP70 trained on her ridiculously young face; insulting, that they’d sent a child in to do their dirty work. Even such a pretty one. . . . “Calm down, Chief Irons,” she said, and even angry, he was pleased to hear the strain in her sultry voice, the edge of fear beneath her useless plea. He was going to enjoy this, even more than he’d imag-ined . . .

. . . but first, some answers.

“Who sent you? Was it Coleman, from headquar-ters? Or did your orders come from higher up ... someone on the board, perhaps? There’s no point in lying, not anymore.”

The girl stared at him, her eyes wide with feigned confusion. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking

about. Please, there’s been some kind of a mistake—“ “Oh, there’s been a mistake, all right,” Irons spat, “and you made it. How long has Umbrella been watching me? What were your orders, exactly—were you supposed to kill me outright, or did Umbrella want to see me suffer a little more first?” The girl didn’t answer for a moment, obviously trying to decide how much to tell him. She was good, her expression still carefully arranged to show only a bewildered fear, but he saw right through it. She’s been caught, she must know that I won’t let her live and she’s going to try and conceal the truth, even now. Young, but well-trained.

“I came to Raccoon looking for my brother,” she said slowly, her wide gray eyes fixed on the gun. “He was with the S.T.A.R.S., and I just—“ “S.T.A.R.S.? Is that the best you can do?” Irons laughed bitterly, shaking his head. The Raccoon S.T.A.R.S. had fled well before things had fallen to shit—and last he’d heard, Umbrella had already “converted” the organization to their purposes, and was working to eliminate those who wouldn’t cross over. As a cover story, it didn’t play.

But there is something. . . .

He narrowed his eyes, studying her pale, anxious face. “And just who is your brother?”

“Chris Redfield, you know him—I’m Claire, his sister, and I don’t know anything about whatever Umbrella did, and I wasn’t sent here to kill you.” She spoke quickly, all but stumbling over herself to get her story out.

She did look like Redfield, through the eyes at least.. . although why she thought that connection would help her somehow was beyond him. Chris Redfield was a pompous, disrespectful upstart who had openly defied him many times; in fact—

“Redfield was working for Umbrella, wasn’t he?” Even saying it aloud, Irons could see that it was the truth—and his anger swelled up like a red tide, an acid heat that flushed through his veins and made him feel sick.

Even my employees, all along. Treasonous Umbrella puppets.

“The Spencer estate, the accusations against Um-brella ... it was all a setup, they had him stirring up trouble to—to distract me so they could steal Birkin’s new virus. . . .”

Irons took a step toward the girl, barely able to keep himself from pulling the trigger in spite of his plans. The girl, Claire, took a step back, holding up her hands, palms out, as if to ward off his righteous fury.

“That’s how the S.T.A.R.S. knew to get out of town,” he snarled, “they were warned to get out of town before the T-Virus leak!”

He took another step forward, but Claire had stopped, her eyes going even wider. “You mean Chris isn’t here?”

Her small, hopeful whisper only fed the red, burn-ing heat that pounded through him—and the feelings were so powerful that they transcended rage, focusing his intentions into something brutal and precise. It wasn’t enough that he’d been betrayed by Umbrella and the S.T.A.R.S., it wasn’t enough that he’d been manipulated, tormented, hunted—

No. No, I have to be lied to by this little girl, a spy and an assassin from a family of traitors, A lifetime devoted to service, a lifetime of hard-won experience and self-sacrifice, and this is my reward. “A slap in

the face,” he said, his voice as cold as this new savagery that filled him up, transforming him into the hunter. “Treating me like an idiot. You don’t even have enough respect to lie well.” He extended the nine-millimeter and walked to-ward her, each step measured and deliberate—and her fear was real this time, he could see it in the way she stumbled back, her lips trembling, her young chest heaving in a most delicious way. She was terrified, trying to look for a weapon and watch him and get away all at the same time, succeeding at none of them as he marched forward.

“/ have the power,” he said, “this is my Sanctuary, this is my domain. You are the intruder. You are the liar, you are the evil—and I’m going to skin you alive. I’m going to make you scream, you bitch, I’m going to make you wish you were never born. Whatever they paid you, it wasn’t enough.”

She backed against one of the shelves, tripping over the leg of the worktable, almost falling on top of the covered trap door in the corner. Irons followed, feeling that beautiful, exciting power course through him, feeling excited by her helplessness. “Please, you don’t want to do this, I’m not who you think I am!”

Her pathetic entreaties made him stop and laugh, wanting to add to her terror, wanting for her to know that his control was absolute. She was wedged be-tween a trophy shelf and the covered pit, and Irons stayed a safe distance away, enjoying the look in her glistening, overbright eyes—the panic of a trapped animal, a soft, warm, powerless animal of tender, pliable flesh. . . .

Irons licked his lips, his hungry gaze traveling over her limber, smooth, cowering form. Another trophy, another body to transform . . . and it was time to get down to business, to—

“Graaagh!”

What the—

The board that covered the subbasement entrance flew into the air, splitting with a tremendous crack, one jagged piece hitting Irons’s hip. He staggered, not understanding—he was in control and yet something had gone horribly, horribly wrong—

Something wrapped around his ankle, something

that squeezed so tight he heard the bone being

crushed, felt incredible, spiking pain travel up his

leg-

• and he locked gazes with the girl, her eyes bright with a new terror, and in that instant of contact, of clarity, he wanted to teil her so much, wanted to tell her that he was a good man, a man who’d never deserved any of what had happened to him—

• and the vise-like grip j erked, and Irons was falling, dropping the gun, pulled into the pit by the screaming and the pain and the beast that waited for him below.

IlinEfEEn

ONE MINUTE, IRONS WAS STANDING IN FRONT of her, staring into her eyes with a terrible, wrenching sorrow—

• and in the next, he was gone. Yanked into a hole in the floor by an arm that she only caught a glimpse of, a muscular, dripping arm with foot-long claws. It whipped out of sight, taking Irons with it into the darkness below.

There was another scream from the creature, a powerful, lusty howl that was matched and then surpassed by the intensity of Irons’s terrified shriek. Frozen by the piercing screams, Claire could only listen, shock and relief and fear for herself battling through her as the horrible cries swept up through the open hole, pounding her ears in the cold, dismal dungeon that Irons had created—

• until his cries burbled to a stop, only a second or two later—and the slurping, meaty, wet noises began. Claire moved. She scooped up the handgun that Irons had dropped and ran around the table in the middle of the room, not wanting to be grabbed and pulled under like he had.

It killed him, it killed him and he was going to kill me—

The reality of what had just happened, what would have happened, hit her all at once, turning her limbs into rubber. Claire forced herself a few more steps away from the open pit and collapsed against one sweating stone wall, taking in great, whooping breaths of the bitterly scented air.

He had been planning to kill her, but not right away. She’d seen the way his mad gaze had crawled over her body, heard the eager anticipation in his crazy laugh—

There was a low, grunting sound from the corner, a bestial sound, the growl of a well-fed lion. Claire turned, raising the heavy gun, astounded that she could feel any more horror—

• and something burst up from the hole, some-thing with flailing arms, and Claire fired, the shot going wide. A glass bottle on a shelf exploded as the thing hit the floor—

• and it was Irons, but only half of him. He had been neatly bisected, cut in two by the thing that had snatched him; everything below the fleshy waist was gone, trails of torn skin and muscle hanging down over the oozing pool of blood that had replaced his legs.

Claire backed toward the door, the weapon still trained on the opening—and heard the creature, the monster scream again, an echoing howl that faded away, falling away into some distance that she couldn’t imagine. A second later, she couldn’t hear it at all; it was gone.

Sherry’s monster. That was Sherry’s monster. She edged slowly toward the mangled corpse of Chief Irons, toward the empty, yawning blackness of the hole—but it wasn’t all blackness. She could see light filtering up from somewhere, enough to see that there was another floor below, what looked like the metal grid pattern of a catwalk—and a ladder leading toil.

A subbasement. . . a way out?

She stepped back from the opening, her thoughts racing and disorganized, trying to absorb the infor-mation along with what Irons had told her. Chris wasn’t in Raccoon, the S.T.A.R.S. were gone—a wonderful, terrible relief, because it meant he was safe, but also that he wasn’t about to come running in to save the day. There had been a spill at Umbrella, which explained the zombies, at least—but what he’d said about Birkin, about Birkin’s virus . . . was that Sherry’s father?

And—maybe the zombies are the result of some laboratory accident, but what about all the other things,

The way Irons had ranted about Umbrella sug-gested that while the accident was unexpected, the pharmaceutical company wasn’t some innocent vic-tim. What had he called it?

“T-Virus,” she said softly, and shivered. “There was Birkin’s new virus, and there was the T-Virus_”

The zombie disease had a name. And you didn’t name something unless you knew something about it, which meant—

• which meant she didn’t know what it meant. All she knew was that she and Sherry needed to get out of Raccoon, and the subbasement might be a way. It wasn’t a dead end, the monster that had killed Irons had gone somewhere . . .

. . . and do you really want to follow it, with Sherry? It could come back—and if it actually is looking for her. . .

Not a happy thought—but then, neither was hitting the streets, and the station was already crawling with God knew what other creatures. Claire checked the clip of the weapon Irons had held on her, counting seventeen bullets. Not enough to face off with the things in the station—but maybe enough to keep a monster at bay. . . .

It was a chance, but she was willing to take it. Claire took a deep breath, blowing it out slowly, collecting herself. She needed to keep it together, for Sherry’s sake if not for her own.

She turned, looking down at the mangled remains of the police chief. It was a terrible way to have died, but she couldn’t find it in herself to feel sorry. He had been ready to rape and torture her, he had laughed when she’d pleaded for her life, and now he was dead; she wasn’t happy about it, but she wasn’t going to shed any tears, either. Her only feeling about it was that she should cover him up before she brought Sherry down with her; the girl had seen enough violence for one lifetime.

You and me both, kiddo, Claire thought tiredly, and started to look around for something to drape over the dead Chief Irons.

Leon caught up to her in the cold industrial hallway that led to the sewer entrance, a few steps up from the flooded subbasement. She’d run ahead to plant the keys that would get them into the sewers, not wanting to have to explain how she’d come by them; she’d just managed to toss them into the boiler room before his footsteps sounded on the metal steps behind her. At least I don’t have to fake being out of breath. . . . Ada could see by the look on his face that she needed to smooth things over; she started talking the second he stepped into the shadowy corridor. “I’m sorry I ran,” she said, offering him a nervous smile. “I hate spiders.”

Leon frowned, studying her—and looking into his searching blue gaze, Ada realized she was going to have to do better than that. She took a step closer to him, not close enough to be invasive but enough so that he could feel the heat of her body. Maintaining eye contact, she tilted her head back to emphasize the height difference between them; it was a little thing, but in her experience, men generally responded well to the little things.

“I guess I’m just in a hurry to get out of here,” she said quietly, losing the smile. “I hope I didn’t worry you.”

He dropped his gaze, but not before she saw a flicker of interest—confused and self-conscious, but

definitely interest. Which made it all the more sur-prising when he stepped away.

“Well, you did. Don’t do it again, okay? I may not be much of a cop, but I’m trying—and God only knows what we’re going to run into down here.” He met her gaze again, speaking softly. “I came with you because I want to help, I want to do my job—and I can’t do that if you go charging ahead.

Besides,” he added, smiling a little, “if you run off, who’s going to help me?”

It was Ada’s turn to look away. Leon was playing it straight with her, openly admitting to his fears—and his response to her not-so-subtle flirtation had been to step back and tell her that he wanted to be a good cop. Interested, but not a fool for his tool. . . and man enough to tell me that he’s unsure of his abilities. She was forced to smile back, but it was a shaky affair. “I’ll do my best,” she said.

Leon nodded and turned to inspect the hallway, letting the conversation drop—much to Ada’s relief.

She wasn’t sure what she thought of him, but was uncomfortably aware that her respect for him was growing; not a good thing, considering the circum-stances.

There wasn’t much to see in the damp, poorly lit hall; two doorways and a dead end. The boiler room, where she’d tossed the keys—or plugs, rather—was directly in front of them, the sewer disposal entrance in a back comer; according to the sign on the wall, the other door opened into a storage closet.

Ada followed as Leon walked to the closest of the two doors, the storage room, hanging back as he pushed it open with his Magnum and stepped inside. Boxes, a table, a trunk; nothing important, but at least no creepy-crawlies. After a quick search, he stepped back into the hall and they moved toward the boiler room.

“How’d you learn to shoot like that, anyway?” Leon asked as they stopped in front of the door. His tone was casual, but she thought she detected more than casual curiosity. “You’re pretty good. Were you in the military or something . . . ?”

Nice try, Officer.

Ada smiled, falling into her carefully rehearsed character. “Paintball, believe it or not. I mean, I went target-shooting some when I was a teenager, with my uncle, but never got into it much. And then a few years ago, a friend at work—we’re both buyers at an art gallery in New York—dragged me to one of those weekend survival retreats, and we had a blast. You know, hiking, rock-climbing, stuff like that—and paintball. It’s great, we go up every couple of months . . . although I never thought I’d have to use it for real.”

She could actually see him buy it, see that he wanted to buy it. It probably answered a few ques-tions that he’d been hesitant to ask.

“Well, you’re better than a lot of the guys I gradu-ated the academy with. Really. So, you ready to get on with this?”

Ada nodded. Leon pushed the door to the boiler room open, scanning the ancient, rusting machinery in the wide empty space before ushering her inside. She made a point of not looking down, wanting Leon to find the small wrapped package that she’d tossed in a few moments earlier.

She hadn’t gotten a good look before. The room, shaped like a sideways “H,” was fitted with corroded railings and two massive old boilers, one on either side. Fluorescent lights sputtered overhead, the few that still worked casting strange shadows across the metal pipes that ran down the water-marked walls.

The door that led into the sewer system was in the far left corner, a heavy-looking hatch next to an inset panel.

“Hey—“ Leon crouched down, picking up the bundle of plugs that would open the hatch. “Looks like somebody dropped something. . . ”

Before Ada could go through the charade of asking him what he’d found, she heard a noise. A soft, slithery noise, coming from the area in the right back corner, neatly blocked from view by one of the boilers.

Leon heard it, too. He stood up quickly, dropping the bundle and raising the shotgun. Ada pointed her Beretta toward the sound, remembering how the door had been slightly ajar when she’d come up from the subbasement.

Oh, hell. The implant.

She knew it even before it crawled into sight—and was shocked anyway. The little bugger had grown, and it had grovmfast, easily twenty times its former size in half as many minutes—and it was still growing, apparently at an exponential rate. In the few seconds it took for the creature to move into the middle of the room, it went from the size of a small dog to the size—and bulk—of a ten-year-old child.

The shape had changed, was changing, too. It was no longer the alien tadpole that had chewed its way out of Bertolucci. The tail was gone, and the creature that inched its way across the rusting floor had developed limbs, stretching arms folding out of its rubbery flesh. Claws popped out of the tan and swimming skin that swirled over its body, accompa-nied by a sound like gristle being punctured. Muscu-lar legs unfurled, liquid that snapped into sinewy shape as its stuttering crawl became smoother, almost feline—

The shotgun and Beretta sounded at the same time, a string of massive blasts peppered with the higher whine of the nine-millimeter. The creature was still shifting, standing, mutating into a humanoid shape—and its response to the booming shots that smacked into its twisting flesh was to open its mouth and vomit, a grunting projectile scream of rotten green bile—

• that hit the floor and started moving. The stream that gushed from its wide, flat face was alive—and the dozen or so crab-like creatures that tumbled out of the monster’s gaping mouth like liquid seemed to know exactly where the threat was to their fetid, mutant womb. The skittering, multi-legged animals swarmed toward Ada and Leon in a silent wave as the implant monster took one massive step forward, pulsing cords standing out on its impossibly long, thick neck. Leon had the heavier firepower. “Got ‘em!” Ada shouted, already targeting and shooting at the closest of the tiny, bilious green crabs. They were fast, but she was faster; she pointed and squeezed, pointed and squeezed, and the baby monsters exploded into small fountains of dark, ichorous fluid, dying as silently as they’d come.

Leon blasted again and again with the shotgun, but Ada couldn’t spare a glance to see how he was faring with the mother beast. Five of the crawling babies left, three more rounds and she’d be dry—

• and she heard the shotgun clatter to the floor, heard the deeper but less powerful fire of the .50 AE rounds resounding through the metal room as she picked off’ two more of the spidering creatures, and her weapon clicked empty.

Without stopping to think, Ada let go of the Beretta and dropped to the floor. She grabbed the shotgun by the barrel, rolling up into a crouch beneath Leon’s line of fire, and swung the weapon down, hard.

Two of the mutant animals were smashed into goo by the heavy stock—but the third, the last of them, sprang forward in an unexpected burst of speed—

• and landed on her thigh, catching hold with needle-sharp claws. Ada dropped the shotgun, crying out as the animal scuttled up her leg, the warm, damp weight of it making her frantic with disgust. Off get it OFF—

She fell backwards, slapping at the creature that had already reached her shoulder and was skittering toward her face, toward her mouth—

• and then Leon was grabbing her, roughly pulling her up with one hand as he snatched at the animal with the other. Ada stumbled against him, clutching at his waist to keep from falling. The bug clung tenaciously to the tight fabric of her dress, but Leon had a good grip. He tore it away, shouting as he flung the flailing thing across the room.

“The Magnum!”

The weapon was stuck in Leon’s belt. Ada jerked it free, saw the creature land near the giant, motionless heap that had birthed it, blasted to death by Leon—

• and fired, managing to get a clean shot despite how off-balance she was, how deeply unnerved she was by how close she’d come to being implanted. The heavy round clanged against the floor, rust chips spattering up—and the creature was blown into an ugly stain against the back wall. Obliterated. Nothing moved, and the two of them just stood for a moment, leaning against each other like survivors of some sudden, terrible accident—which, in a way, they were. The entire firefight had taken place in less than a minute, and they had come out unscathed—but Ada wasn’t going to kid herself about how close it had been, or what they had just managed to destroy. G-Virus.

She was sure of it; the T-Virus couldn’t have created such a complicated creature, not without a team of surgeons—and they’d seen it growing; how big, how powerful would the creature have become if they hadn’t walked in when they had? The beast might have been some early G-strain experiment, but what if it had been the result of a leak? What if there were more of them?

The sewers, the factory, the underground levels—dark, shadowy places, secret places, where anything could be growing. . . .

Whatever the situation, the trip to the labs wasn’t looking like a walk anymore—and Ada was suddenly very glad that Leon had decided to come along. Since he was so goddamn insistent on going first, if some-thing attacked, she’d have a better chance of surviv-ing—

“Are you okay? Did it hurt you?”

Leon, one arm still supporting her, looking into her eyes with a heartfelt concern. Ada realized that she could smell him, a clean, soapy smell, and pushed herself away. She handed the Magnum back to him and straightened her dress, studiously inspecting it for rips to avoid looking at him.

“Thanks, I’m fine. Don’t sweat it.”

It came out harsher than she meant it to, but she was rattled, and not just by the implant’s vicious attack. She glanced at him, and wasn’t sure how to feel when she saw that her response had caught him off guard. He blinked slowly, and a kind of coolness settled into his gaze, indicating a strength of character that she hadn’t bothered to give him credit for. “Paintball, huh?” he said mildly, and without an-other word, he turned to pick up the package she’d planted.

Ada stared after him, telling herself how absolutely ridiculous it was to care what he thought of her. They were about to embark on a journey in which she might have to desert him, or watch him sacrifice his life in order to save her own . . .

. . . or kill him myself. Let’s not forget that, friends and neighbors. So who gives a shit if he thinks I’m an ungrateful bitch?

Straight up. She should thank him, for reminding her.

Ada stooped down to retrieve the shotgun, feeling like she needed to do a better job of keeping her priorities straight—and feeling an emptiness inside that she hadn’t noticed in a long, long time.

TwEnfY

MR. IRONS HAD BEEN A VERY BAD MAN. A

sick man. Sherry supposed she’d known it all along on some level, but seeing his secret torture chamber, like some mad doctor’s workshop, made it a lot more real. The room was just gross, bones and bottles and a smell even worse than the zombies. Perhaps that was why seeing the shape on the floor, the incomplete body shape beneath the bloodstained tarp, didn’t bother her half as much as Claire seemed to think it would. Sherry stared at it, wondering what had hap-pened exactly.

“Come on, sweetie, let’s get going,” Claire said, and the forced note of brightness in her voice told Sherry that Mr. Irons had been severely messed up. All Claire had told her was that Mr. Irons had attacked her, and then something had attacked him, and that there was a chance they could get somewhere safe if they went down into the basement. Sherry had been so relieved to see Claire at all that she hadn’t bothered to ask questions.

Not big enough to be a whole person under there . . .did he get eaten? Or chopped into pieces? “Sherry? Let’s go, okay?”

Claire laid a hand on her shoulder, gently pulling her away from what was left of the police chief. Sherry let herself be led toward the dark hole in the corner, deciding that it was best to keep her questions to herself. She thought about saying that she didn’t care that Mr. Irons was dead, but she didn’t want to appear rude or disrespectful. Besides which, Claire was trying to take care of her, and Sherry didn’t mind that at all.

Claire went down the ladder first, and after a second, called up to her that it was safe to come down. Sherry stepped carefully on the metal rungs, feeling really happy for the first time in days. They were doing something, they were getting out of the RPD station and headed for escape; whatever else hap-pened, it was a good way to feel.

Claire helped her down the last couple of rungs, lifting her and setting her on the metal floor. Sherry turned and looked around, her eyes widening. “Wow,” she said, and the word whispered away into the dim shadows and came whispering back, reflected off” the strange walls.

“Yeah,” Claire said. “Come on.”

Claire started walking, her boots clanking out ech-oes, and Sherry followed closely, still looking around in amazement. It was like a bad guy’s lair in a spy movie, some factory passage inside of a mountain or something. They were on a catwalk surrounded by rails, a murky green light coming up through the grate floor from somewhere far below—and although there was rough brick to their right, to the left was an actual cave wall. She could see giant, dripping pillars of stone that stretched off into the dark, natural forma-tions of rock that were stained green by the weak and ghostly light.

Sherry wrinkled her nose. As interesting as it was, it smelled pretty rotten. And she didn’t like the way that sound carried in the chill air, making everything seem hollow.

“What do you think this place is?” she asked softly. Claire shook her head. “I’m not sure. Between the smell and the location, I’d say we’re in part of a sewage treatment plant.”

Sherry nodded, glad to know—and even more glad to see the way out just ahead of them. The walkway wasn’t very long; it turned left, and there was another ladder at the end, one that went up.

When they got to it, Claire hesitated, peering up at the opening over-head and then back around at the dark and empty cave.

“I should go up first . . . how ‘bout you climb up right behind, but stay on the ladder until I say it’s clear?”

Sherry nodded, relieved. For a second, she’d been afraid that Claire was going to tell her to stay down here and wait, like before.

No way. It’s dark, stinky, and lonely. If I were a monster, this is where I’d be. . . .

Claire went up, boosting herself easily through the hole, and Sherry clambered up just behind, holding the cool metal of the rungs tightly. After a few seconds, Claire’s long, slender arms reached down to help her out.

They were back on solid ground, a short cement hallway that seemed incredibly bright after the cave. Sherry figured they were still in the sewage plant; the smell wasn’t as bad, but the hall was bordered on the left by a motionless river of sludge water, maybe a foot deep and five or six feet across; the muddy water ran off in either direction, one end through a low, rounded tunnel, the other stopped by a big metal door. It was all overlooked by a kind of balcony, but Sherry didn’t see any stairs.

Which means . . . oh, yuck.

“Do we have to?” she asked.

Claire sighed. ‘”Fraid so. But look at the bright side—no sane monster would follow us through that.”

Sherry smiled. It wasn’t particularly funny, but she appreciated what Claire was trying to do—it was the same as covering up Mr. Irons’s body, or telling her that her parents were probably safe.

She’s trying to shield me from how bad things really are. .. .

Sherry liked that, so much so that she was already dreading the moment when Claire would leave her for good. Eventually, she would; Claire had a whole life somewhere else, her own friends and family, and once they got out of Raccoon, she would go back to wherever she came from and Sherry would be alone again. Even if her parents were okay, she would be alone .. . and though she wanted very much for

them to be safe and well, she wasn’t looking forward to the end of her time with Claire.

She was only twelve, but she’d known for a couple of years that her family was different from most. The other kids at school had parents who spent time with them, had birthday parties and went on camping trips, and had brothers and sisters and pets. She’d never had any of those things. She knew that her parents meant well, and that they loved her—but sometimes, she felt like no matter how quiet and good and self-sufficient she was, she was still in their way—

“You ready for this?”

Claire’s soft, pretty voice brought her back to the situation, reminding her that she needed to be more alert. Sherry nodded, and Claire stepped down into the dark, dirty water, reaching back to help her. The water was cold and greasy, and came up to Sherry’s knees; it was gross, but not puking bad. Claire motioned toward the big metal door to their left with her new gun, looking as disgusted as Sherry felt.

“Looks like we’re going to—“

A loud noise from the balcony cut her off, and they both looked up, Sherry instinctively moving closer to Claire as the noise came again. It sounded like foot-steps, but too slow and too loud to be normal—

• and Sherry saw a man in a long, dark coat walk into view, and felt her mouth go dry with fear. He was a giant, maybe as tall as ten feet, and his bald skull gleamed as white as a dead fish belly. She couldn’t see him clearly because of the angle, but she could see enough—and she could feel that he was bad, that there was something very wrong and bad about him. It radiated off of him like sickness.

“Claire?” she squeaked, her voice breaking as the giant man stalked across the balcony, as he started to turn toward them—slowly, so slowly, and Sherry didn’t want to see his face, didn’t want to see the face of a man that could frighten her so deeply by just walking onto a balcony—

“Run!”

Claire grabbed her hand and the two of them ran, splashing through the thick water toward the sealed door. Sherry concentrated on not falling, on praying that the door would open—

• don’t be locked, don’t be locked!

• and on not looking back, not wanting to see what the giant, bad man was doing. The door was close but it seemed to take forever, each second stretched out as they fought against the weight of the cold and oily water.

They stumbled to the hatch and Claire found its control, slamming at the button in a kind of panic that made Sherry even more afraid. The door split in the middle, one half sliding up into the ceiling and the other slipping beneath the rippling waves. Sherry didn’t look back, but Claire did. Whatever she saw made her leap through the door, pulling Sherry off her feet and hurtling into the long, dark tunnel that lay behind the hatch. As soon as they were through, Claire fumbled at the wall and the door slid closed behind them, sealing them into the dripping darkness.

“Don’t move and be quiet,” Claire whispered, and in the very dim light that came from somewhere up ahead, Sherry could see that she was holding the gun out in front of her, trying to search the heavy shadows for any new threats. Sherry obeyed, her heart pound-ing, wondering who, what that man had been—it was the man Claire had asked her about before, that much was obvious, but what was he?

People didn’t get that big, and Claire had been scared, too—

Clink.

A metal noise, soft and muffled from the wall behind her—and Sherry felt the water around her feet start to move suddenly, a swift rush of current that pulled on her legs, pulled her off balance—

• and she stumbled, tripped, plunging face-first into the cold and nasty water as the current got stronger, sucking her backwards. Sherry reached out, trying to find something, anything, to hold on to, and felt slimy stone whip beneath her clutching fingers as the waters rushed her away, away from Claire.

• can’t breathe—

Sherry kicked wildly, twisting her body, her eyes stinging from the bad water—and managed to take a breath as her head broke the surface, as she realized that she was in a tunnel, a pitch black shaft no bigger than the vents from the station. The swift waters carried her along, Sherry taking deep gasps of the foul air overhead, forcing herself not to struggle against the relentless power of the hissing liquid. The tunnel had to end somewhere—and wherever it came out, she had to be ready to run.

Claire, please find me, please don’t give up on me. ...

She was lost, blind and deaf, sliding down through the dark—and farther and farther away from the only person who could protect her from the nightmare creatures that had taken over Raccoon.

Annette no longer doubted that her husband had escaped the laboratory levels. Not only were half of the facility entrances unsealed, the fences that sur-rounded the factory had been breached—and the sewer tunnels, the tunnels that should have been mostly empty, were crawling with human carriers that had to have come from outside. Even as advanced as they’d been in terms of cellular deterioration, she’d had to shoot down five of them just to clear a path from the tram to the sewage operations room. After what seemed an eternity of trudging through the semi-treated, inky waters of the labyrinthian system, she came to the platform she’d been looking for. Annette stepped up into the concrete tunnel, gazing warily at the closed door a few meters in front of her. Closed and undamaged, a good sign—but what if he’d gone through before he’d lost all trace of human intelligence, before he’d grown into an un-thinking, violent animal? Even now, he might still retain something resembling memory; the truth was, she didn’t know.

The G-Virus hadn’t been tested on humans yet. . .

. . . and if he did go through? If he made it to the police station?

No. She couldn’t, wouldn’t entertain the possibili-ty. Considering what she did know about the progres-sive chemophysiologic changes—what he would be capable of doing if the virus worked the way it was supposed to—the thought of him getting to an unin-fected population . . . well, it was unthinkable. The station is safe, she thought firmly. Irons may be an incompetent ass, but his cops aren’t. Wherever William is, he couldn’t have gotten past them. She couldn’t afford to believe anything else; Sherry was there, if she’d done what she was supposed to do—and besides being her own flesh and blood (which, she reminded herself, was reason enough), Sherry played a very important role in her future plans.

Annette leaned against one cold and sweating wall, aware that time was running out but simply unable to go on without resting for a moment. She’d been counting on the encoded territorial instinct to keep him close to the lab, and had been so sure that she would find him, that her live, human scent would lure him to her . .. but she was almost at the end of the contained area, and all she’d found were a dozen ways in

which he could have escaped.

And Umbrella will be here soon. I have to get back, I have to activate the fail-safe before they can stop me. William deserved to be at peace—but beyond that, destroying the creature that had once been her hus-band would eradicate all of her doubts about the success of her objective. What if she blew the lab and escaped, only to find that Umbrella had captured him? All of her struggles, all of his work, for nothing. . . .

Annette closed her eyes, wishing that there was an easy way to make the decision that had to be made. The fact was, William’s death simply wasn’t as crucial as getting rid of the lab. And there was a good chance that they wouldn’t find him, that they weren’t even aware of his transformation—

• and it’s not as though I have a choice. He’s not here, he’s not anywhere.

She pushed away from the wall, walking slowly toward the door. She would check the last few tun-nels, perhaps see if the conference rooms showed any sign of damage—and then she would go back. Go back and finish what Umbrella had started. Annette pushed the door open—

• and heard footsteps, echoing through the lonely corridor from somewhere up ahead; the hall was shaped like a “T,” the sounds melting into them-selves, making it impossible to tell from which direc-tion they were coming—but they were the strong, sure steps of an uninfected human, perhaps more than one, and that could only mean one thing. Umbrella. They’ve finally come.

Rage boiled up through her, making her hands shake, her lips curl back from gritted teeth. It had to be them, it had to be one of their murdering spies; besides Irons and a few of the city officials, only Umbrella knew that these tunnels were still in use—and that they led to the underground facility. The possibility that it was some innocent survivor of the spill didn’t cross her mind, and neither did running; she raised the handgun and waited for the heartless, murdering bastard to appear.

A figure stepped into sight, a woman in red, and Annette fired—

• bam, but she was trembling, screaming inside, and the shot went high. It ricocheted off the cement wall with a whining, zipping sound, and the woman was raising a weapon of her own—

• and Annette fired again, barn-zip, but suddenly there was another one, a blurred, flying shape that leapt in front of the woman, knocking her out of the way, all of it happening at once—

• and Annette heard the cry of pain, a man’s cry, and felt a burst of roaring triumph. Got him, I got him—

But there could be more, she hadn’t hit the woman—and they were trained killers.

Annette turned and ran, her dirty lab coat flying, her wet shoes slapping against the cement. She had to get back to the lab, fast.

Time had run out.

TwEnfY-OnE

LEON STOPPED TO ADJUST HIS SHOULDER

harness, so Ada walked on ahead, musing over how surprisingly clear the first few tunnels had been. If memory served, this corridor let out right next to sewage treatment ops; past that was the tram to the factory, and then the machine lift to the underground. Conditions would probably get worse the closer they got to the labs, but with the trek as trouble-free as it had been so far, she was feeling optimistic.

Leon had been uncomfortably quiet since they’d opened the path into the sewers, only talking when it was necessary—watch your step, hold up a minute, which way do you think we should go ... she didn’t think he was even aware of the defenses he’d put up, but she was getting better at reading him. Officer Kennedy was brave, he was at least above-average in the brains department, he was a crack shot—and he didn’t know dick about women. When she’d blown off his attempt to comfort her, she’d confused and hurt him—and now he didn’t know how to interact with her. He’d chosen to withdraw rather than risk another rejection.

Really, it’s for the best. No point in leading him on when it’s not necessary, and it saves me the trouble of ego-stroking. . . .

She stepped into the intersection of the empty hall, thinking about the easiest place to part company from her escort—

• and saw the woman, just as she fired.

Bam!

Ada felt chips of concrete spray across her bare shoulders as she brought the Beretta up, a blur of emotions and realizations flashing through her in the instant it took to react. She wouldn’t be able to return fire in time, the woman’s next shot would kill her, anger at herself for being so stupid—and recognition. Birkin—

She heard the second shot—and then she was hit, shoved out of the way and falling to the cold floor as Leon cried out in pain and surprise, his warm bulk landing on top of her.

Ada took a deep breath, shocked and amazed as she understood what had happened, as Leon rolled off of her and clutched at his arm. She heard running footsteps and Leon’s harsh panting, and sat up. Oh, my God. No shit—

He’d taken a bullet. For her.

Ada stumbled to her feet, bending over him.

“Leon!”

He looked up at her, jaw clenched against the pain. Blood seeped through the fingers of his hand, pressed to his left armpit.

“I’m—okay,” he gasped, and although his face was pale, his eyes clouded with suffering, she thought he was probably right. It undoubtedly hurt like a son of a bitch, but it wouldn’t—shouldn’t—kill him. It would have killed me, Leon saved my life—

And on the tail of that thought, —Annette Birkin.

Still alive.

“That woman,” she blurted, the guilt hitting her even as she turned to run. “I have to talk to her.” Ada took off, sprinting around the corner and down the hall, the door at the end standing open. Leon would live, he would be fine, and if she could catch up to Annette, this whole goddamn nightmare would be over. She’d studied the file photos, she knew it was Birkin’s wife—and if, by chance, the woman wasn’t carrying a sample, she’d sure as hell know where one was.

She ran through the door and stopped short of jumping into yet another water-filled tunnel, pausing just long enough to listen, to scan the surface of the rippling murk. No splashing sounds, and there were still lapping waves to the left—

• and a ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to a fan shaft.

• goes to operations.

Ada plunged into the water and made for the ladder. There was a hallway farther along, but it was a dead end; Annette would surely have opted for es-cape.

She quickly scaled the metal rungs, refusing to let herself think about Leon (because he was fine) as she peered through the shaft and saw that it was clear. Mrs. Doctor was probably still running, but Ada wasn’t going to walk into another bullet. Through the shaft, a quick peek past the dead, massive blades of the vent fan at the far end, and back down another ladder. The giant two-story chamber that housed the sewage-treatment machines was emp-ty of life, as cold and industrial and strewn with equipment as she’d expected. There was a hydraulic bridge that spanned the room, raised to the level she’d exited on—which meant that Annette must have gone down via the west ladder, the only other way out. Ada flipped through her mental maps as she started across the bridge, remembering that it went down into one of the treatment center’s dumping grounds—

“Drop it, you bitch!”

Behind her. Ada halted, feeling a pain inside—the pain of a hearty slap to the ego. The second time she’d screwed up, badly, in as many minutes—but there was no way she was going to obey Annette’s hysterical command. The woman’s aim was for shit and Ada tensed, preparing to drop, to spin and fire—

Barn-ping!

The shot hit the floor next to Ada’s right foot, glancing off the rusting bridge. Annette had her. Ada dropped the Beretta, raising her hands slowly, turning to face the scientist.

Jesus, I deserve to die for this. . . .

Annette Birkin walked toward her, a Browning nine-millimeter trembling wildly in one outstretched hand. Ada winced inwardly at the sight of that shaking gun—but saw a possible opportunity as An-nette moved closer, finally coming to a stop less than ten feet in front of her.

Too close. Too close, and she’s right on the edge of a total collapse, isn’t she?

“Who are you? What’s your name?!”

Ada swallowed heavily, putting a stutter into her voice. “Ada, Ada Wong. Please don’t shoot, please, I haven’t done anything—“ Annette frowned, backing up a step. “Ada... Wong. I know that name—Ada,

that was John’s girlfriend’s name....”

Ada’s mouth dropped open. “Yes, John Howe!

But—how did you know? Do you know where he is?” The disheveled scientist glared at her. “I know because John worked with my husband, William. You’ve heard of him, of course—William Birkin, the man responsible for the creation of the T-Virus” Annette fairly glowed with a mix of pride and despair as she spoke, giving Ada hope; it was a weakness that she could use. Ada had read the files on William Birkin—read about his steady climb through Umbrella’s hierarchy, the advances in virology and genetic sequencing... and about the scientific ambi-tion that had made him a veritable sociopath. It looked as though his wife was operating on a similar plane—which meant that the Mrs. would have no problem pulling the trigger.

Play it dumb, and don’t give her a reason to doubt it. “T-Virus? What’s—“ Ada blinked, then widened her eyes. “Doctor—Birkin? Wait, the Doctor Birkin, the biochemist?”

She saw a flash of pleasure cross Annette’s face—but then it was gone, and there was only despair. Despair and the flickering of bitter madness, deep in her bloodshot eyes.

“John Howe is dead,” she said coldly, “he died three months ago at the Spencer estate. My condo-lences—but then, you’re about to join him, aren’t you? You’re not going to take the G-Virus away from me, you can’t have it!”

Ada started to shake all over. “G-Virus? Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You know,” Annette snarled. “Umbrella sent you to steal it, you can’t lie to me! William’s dead to me now, Umbrella took him from me, they forced him to use it! They forced him. ... ”

She trailed off, her gaze suddenly far away. Ada tensed—but then Annette was back, her eyes welling up with tears, the weapon pointed at Ada’s face. “A week ago, they came,” she whispered. “They came to take it, and they shot my William when he wouldn’t give them the samples. They took the case, they took all of the finals, both series—except for the one that he managed to keep, the G-Virus ...” Annette’s voice raised into a shout suddenly, a pathetic and somehow pleading shout. “He was dy-ing, don’t you see? He didn’t have any choice!” Ada understood. She understood all of it. “He injected himself, didn’t he?”

The scientist nodded, her limp blond hair falling across her eyes, her voice a whisper again. “It revi-talizes cellular function. It—it changed him. I didn’t see—what he did, but I saw the bodies of the men who tried to kill him, afterwards ... and I heard the screams.”

Ada took a step closer, reaching out as if to comfort her, her own features set into a mask of sympathy—but Annette thrust the gun at her again. Even in her sorrow, she wasn’t going to let Ada get any closer. But it’s almost close enough....

“I’m so sorry,” Ada said, lowering her arms. “So the G-Virus, it leaked, it changed all of Raccoon—“ Annette shook her head. “No. When the Umbrella assassins were—stopped, the case was broken. The T-Virus leaked—the lab workers hit by the airborne were contained, but there were rats, you see. Rats in the sewers....”

She paused, her lips trembling. “... unless Wil-liam, my sweet William has started to reproduce. Implanting embryos, replicating ... it shouldn’t be time for that yet, but I—“ She broke off, her eyes

narrowing, the madness sweeping over her again as visibly as a crashing wave. High color flared in her pale cheeks, her red-rimmed eyes glossy with paranoia.

Get ready—

“You can’t have it!” Annette screamed, spittle flying from her cracked lips. “He gave his life to keep it from you, you’re a spy and you can’t have it—“ Ada ducked and leapt, pistoning both of her arms beneath Annette’s, shoving the gun up and away from both of them. The Browning discharged, sending a round clanging off the ceiling as they fought for control of the weapon. Annette was physically weaker, but she was driven by demons of hatred and loss, the edge of insanity lending her strength—

• but no sense—

Ada let go of the gun suddenly and Annette stum-bled, not prepared for the unexpected move. She crashed against the railing of the bridge and Ada charged, driving her elbow into Annette’s lower belly, hitting her beneath her center of balance—

• and Annette half-turned, her mouth an open darkness of surprise, her arms pinwheeling for bal-ance—and she plummeted over the railing, silently, not a sound until the dull thump as her body hit the floor some twenty feet below.

“Shit, “Ada hissed, stepping to the rail and looking down. She lay there, facedown and motionless, the gun still clenched in one thin white hand. That’s just great. Walk into an ambush, not once but twice for hell’s sake, then kill the one crazy bitch who can tell you where the samples are—

A low moan floated up from Annette Birkin’s body—and she moved, hunching her back, trying to roll onto her side.

Shit shit shit!

Ada turned and ran across the bridge, scooping up the Beretta as she hurried for what looked like a control panel next to the fan shaft ladder. She’d have to lower the bridge, get to Annette before she could crawl away—

• except the panel was for the fan, and as another painful moan—a slightly louder moan—echoed up through the chamber, Ada knew she didn’t have much time.

The dump, I can go through the dump, circle back around through one of the tunnels—

Even as she thought it, she was jogging for the west ladder, hoping that the pitiful scientist was injured enough to stay down for a minute or two. There was a small balcony at the end of the bridge that looked over the dump, and the metal ladder hung down from an opening at the far right. Ada lowered herself down as quickly as she could, dropping the last several feet onto a cement landing.

The dumping area was a large boxy room, the walls heaped with industrial debris—smashed crates, rust-ing pipes, wire-encrusted panels, and rotting card-board. She stepped off the landing and into almost three feet of black sludge, the cold, gooey muck rising up to her thighs. She didn’t care, she only wanted to get to the lady Birkin, to bring an end to her time in Raccoon—

• except something moved. Beneath the opaque and stinking liquid, something big moved. Ada saw what might have been a reptilian spine slice through the murk in front of her, saw and heard a stack of

boards topple into the water some ten feet away in the same instant.

You gotta be kidding me. . . .

Whatever it was, it was big enough to change her mind about the hurry she was in to get to Annette.

Ada backed to the platform and boosted herself up, never taking her gaze from the indeterminate shape as it curled back through the lapping sludge—

• and rose up in a sudden, violent spray of dark-ness, coming straight at her. Ada raised the Beretta and started to fire.

There was a tiny elevator platform in one corner of the empty conference room, a square of metal that apparently went down. Claire hurried toward it, fetid water dripping from her clothes, feeling horribly lost and anxious to keep moving, to find Sherry. Please be alive, baby, please....

She’d found the drainage hole, but no Sherry—and after agonizingly long moments of screaming into the rushing water, of trying to squeeze into the tiny hole, she’d forced herself to abandon the effort. Sherry was gone, maybe drowned, maybe not—but unless the flow of water suddenly decided to reverse itself, she wasn’t coming back.

Claire found the controls for the one-man lift and punched a button. A hidden motor whirred and the lift descended, inching down through the floor, proba-bly taking her to some other empty hall, some other blank and unknown room—or worse, directly into the path of yet another unnatural creature. She clenched her damp hands in frustration as the lift slid slowly down, wishing that it was faster, that there was some way to speed up her search. She felt like she was running blind, taking whatever path was in front of her; from the tunnel where Sherry had been lost, she’d found a dimly lit corridor and then the unadorned and somehow sterile conference room. It was like an endless funhouse—sans fun—and she was feeling pretty shitty for bringing Sherry into it; if the girl was dead, it would be her fault—

She shut down the futile thinking before it got any farther, making herself focus. Self-recrimination was a killer, and she couldn’t afford it. The elevator was lowering into a hall, and she crouched down, pointing Irons’s heavy gun in front of her as her new surround-ings rose into view.

The concrete corridor had another lift at the other end, and was intersected by a second hall, maybe forty feet away—and next to the junction there was a body propped against one cement wall, what looked like a cop—

She felt a mix of shock and distress, her eyes widening as she took in the cop’s slack features, the hair color, the build . . .

. . . that’s—Leon?

Before the lift hit the floor, Claire jumped off and ran toward the crumpled figure. It was Leon, and he wasn’t moving, either unconscious or dead—but no, he was breathing, and as she crouched in front of him, his eyes flickered open. His hand was high on his left arm, his fingers wet with blood.

“Claire?” His blue eyes seemed clear, tired but aware.

“Leon! What happened, are you okay?”

“I got shot, must’ve blacked out for a minute. . .” He carefully took his hand away, exposing a small

ragged hole just above his armpit, oozing red. It looked painful, but at least it wasn’t gushing. Wincing, Leon pulled the shredded fabric of his uniform over the hole and put his hand back over it. “Hurts like all hell, but I think I’ll survive—Ada, where’s Ada?”

The last was delivered almost frantically, Leon struggling to push himself away from the wall. With a soft groan, he fell back, obviously in no shape to move.

“Lie still, just rest for a minute,” Claire said.

“Who’s Ada?”

“I met her at the station,” he said. “I couldn’t find you, and we heard that you can get out of Raccoon—through the sewers. The city’s not safe, there was some kind of a leak at the Umbrella lab, and Ada wanted to leave right away. Somebody shot at us, and I got hit—Ada went after the shooter, down that hall, she said it was a woman....”

He shook his head as if to clear it, then frowned up at her. “I have to find her. I don’t know how long I was out, but not more than a couple of minutes, she can’t have gone far—“ He started to sit forward again and Claire stopped him, pushing him back gently. “I’ll go. I—I was with this little girl, and she’s lost somewhere in the sewers. Maybe I can find both of them.”

Leon hesitated—then nodded, resigning himself to his injury. “How’s your ammo?”

“Uh—seven in this one—“ She patted the weapon that she’d taken from the squad car, tucked in her belt. It suddenly seemed like a million years ago, that wild ride. “—and seventeen in this one.”

She held up Irons’s gun, and Leon nodded again, his head rolling back tiredly. “Okay, that’s good. I should be able to follow in a few minutes... be careful, alright? And good luck.”

Claire stood up, wishing that they had more time. She wanted to tell him about Chris, about Irons and Mr. X and the T-Virus, she wanted to find out what he knew about Umbrella, or if he knew the way out of the sewers—

• but this Ada might be facing down a sniper right now, and Sherry could be anywhere. Anywhere at all. Leon had closed his eyes. Claire turned and started down the intersecting hall, wondering if any of them had a chance to make it out of this madness alive.

TwEntY-Two

ANNETTE HURT ALL OVER. SHE SAT UP SLOWly, feeling sick from the seeming hundreds of aches and pains that yammered for her attention. Her neck and stomach hurt, she’d jammed her right wrist, both knees felt like they were swelling—but it was the sharp pain in her right side that was the worst, because she thought she might have cracked or even broken a rib.

You horrible, horrible woman—

Annette leaned back, supporting her strained neck with her uninjured hand, but saw only metal and shadow; Ada Wong, the bitch from Umbrella, had apparently run away. She’d pretended not to know anything, but Annette wasn’t stupid; Ada was proba-bly already on her way to the lab—or coming after

her, anxious to finish her off.

Umbrella, Umbrella did this. . . .

Annette crawled to her feet, using the rage to overcome the pain. She had to get out, to get to the laboratory before the spies did—but oh, she hurt so very much! The stabbing sensation in her gut was terrible, a knife sawing at her insides, and the lab seemed a million miles away . . .

. . . can’t let them steal his work. . . . She staggered toward the door to the cavernous room, one arm wrapped around her burning chest—and stopped, tilting her head to one side, listening. Shots. Echoing through the chill air, coming from the adjacent dumping grounds—and a second later, she heard a thundering hiss, more shots, splashing—

Annette grinned, a tight, humorless grin. Perhaps she’d get to the lab first, after all.

The bridge, lower the bridge, don’t let her es-cape. . . .

Tired and aching, Annette stumbled to the hydrau-lic’s controls and activated the span’s descent. The powerful hum of the bridge’s motors drowned out the noises of whatever battle was being waged, the plat-form rotating down and locking into place with a heavy clang.

Annette pushed herself away from the wall, falling against the console by the door. She found the switches for the ventilation fan and flicked them up, still smiling grimly as the whining start-up high overhead grew into a dull roar. Ada had run into trouble in the dump, and Annette wasn’t going to let her just climb back out of it; with the bridge lowered and the shaft blocked, Ms. Wong would have to fight her way through.

Hope it’s a pack of tickers, you bitch, I hope they’re tearing you to pieces in there. .. .

Annette turned away from the console—and fell, the pain and dizziness too much, her bruised and swelling knees hitting the floor and sending fresh needles of agony through her legs—

• and the door in front of her opened. Annette raised the gun but wasn’t able to aim, expending what was left of her strength just to keep from screaming in suffering and frustration.

William, it hurts so bad, I’m sorry but I can’t—

A young woman crouched in front of her, a look of wary concern on her smudged face. She was dressed in cutoffs and a vest, dripping with sewer water—and held a sleek and heavy handgun, not pointing it directly at Annette—but not pointing it away, either. Another spy.

“Are you Ada?” the girl asked tentatively, reaching out to touch her—and it was more than Annette could stand, to be touched in pity by some heartless, scheming corporate pawn.

“Get away from me,” Annette snarled, slapping at the girl’s outstretched hand weakly. “I’m not your ‘contact,’ and I don’t have it on me. You can kill me, but you won’t find it.”

The girl moved back, a look of confusion on her dirty face. “Find what? Who are you?”

The questions again, and the fury passed, leaving her numb. Annette was tired of playing games; it hurt too much, and she just wasn’t strong enough to fight anymore. “Annette Birkin,” she said wearily. “As if

you didn’t know. . . ”

She’ll kill me now. It’s over, it’s all over. Annette couldn’t help it. Tears trickled down cheeks, tears as futile as her plans. She’d failed William, she’d failed as a wife and a mother and even as a scientist. At least it would end now, at least there would finally be an end to the anguish—

“Are you Sherry’s mother?”

The girl’s words stunned her, snapping her out of her exhausted collapse as sharply as a slap to the face. “What?! Who—how do you know about Sherry?” “She’s lost in the sewers,” the girl said, speaking quickly, her voice tinged with desperation as she shoved her handgun into her belt. “Please, you have to help me find her! She was sucked into one of the drainage shafts and I don’t know where to look—“ “But I told her to go to the station,” Annette wailed, the physical pain all but forgotten, her heart pounding out waves of horrified disbelief. “Why is she here? It’s dangerous, she’ll be killed! And the G-Virus—Umbrella will find her, they’ll take it, why is she here?”

The girl reached for her again, helping her up, and Annette didn’t fight, too weak and terrified to fight. If Sherry was in the sewers, if Umbrella found her—

The girl stared at her intently, looking somehow guilty and afraid and hopeful all at once. “The station was overrun—where do the drains go? Please, An-nette, you have to tell me!”

The truth dawned into her exhaustion and fear like a ray of bitter light.

The drains let out into the filter pool—which hap-pens to be right next to the factory tram. The fastest route to the labs.

It was a trick. The girl was using Sherry’s name to get to the facility, to get information about the G-Virus. Sherry was still at the station, safe and well, and this was all an elaborate ruse—

• but Umbrella knows the way, why would she ask if she knows already?It doesn’t make sense!

Annette raised the gun, her aching wrist trembling, and backed away from the girl. Her confusion was too big, the questions too many—and because she couldn’t be sure of anything, she couldn’t pull the trigger.

“Don’t you move. Don’t you follow me,” she snarled, ignoring the pain, reaching back to push the door open. “I’ll shoot if you try to follow me.” “Annette—I don’t understand, I just want to—“ “Shut up! Shut up and leave me alone, can’t you all just leave me alone?!”

She backed through the door, pushing it closed on the surprised and frightened girl, squeezing her arm against her bruised or broken ribs as soon as the hatch was shut.

Sherry. . . .

It was a lie, it had to be a lie—but it didn’t change anything, either way. She could still make it, she had to make it back to the facility, to finish what she had started.

Turning, limping and gasping, Annette stumbled into the cold darkness of the connecting tunnel, letting each terrible, aching step be a reminder of what Umbrella had done.

A cold, silent cavern, the walls sheened with ice, and I am lost. I am lost and exhausted, running and afraid for a very long time, so I sit down to rest. So quiet, so cold—but my arm hurts, I’m sitting against a wall that has grown spines, and one of them is digging into my flesh, piercing me. It hurts so badly, and I have to get up, I have to find someone, I have to—

• wake up.

Leon opened his eyes, aware at once that he’d hazed out again. The realization made him catch his breath, the sudden fear jolting him fully awake.

Ada, Claire—Jesus, how long?

He gently pulled his hand away from his arm, the blood gummy and thick between his fingers. It hurt, but not as sharply as before—and the bleeding had stopped, at least at the entrance; the shreds of his torn uniform had clotted to the wound, forming a stiff seal. He leaned forward, reaching around to touch where the bullet had come out; again, a hardening, tacky patch of fabric beneath the pulsing ache of the wound. He couldn’t be positive, but he thought that the bullet had gone straight through the flesh, missing the bone completely—which meant he was extremely god-damn lucky.

Even if it blew my arm off, Ada’s still out there—and I sent Claire after her. I have to go after them. He thought it was the shock of the trauma that had made him black out, rather than the pain or blood loss—and he couldn’t afford any more time to re-cover. Clenching his teeth, Leon pushed himself up with his good arm, his muscles cold and stiff from the damp chill of the concrete.

His left shoulder brushed against the wall, and he gasped as the pain intensified briefly, stabbing and hot—but it ebbed, receding to the duller throbbing sensation after a few seconds. Leon waited it out, breathing deeply, reminding himself that it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

When he was finally on his feet, he decided that he could take it; he wasn’t light-headed or dizzy, and although there was blood on the floor and wall, there wasn’t nearly as much as he’d thought there would be. Careful not to jostle his wound, Leon turned and walked down the corridor to the closed door at the end, moving as quickly as he could.

Through the door, he was faced with another water-filled tunnel stretching off in either direction; there was a ladder on the wall to his left, but he didn’t even want to guess at how to climb it without ripping open the wound—besides which, there was a loudly spin-ning fan at the top. He struck off to the right, stepping down into the dark water and sloshing forward, hoping that he’d see some sign as to where Ada or Claire had gone.

Chasing after the sniper . . . how could she do that, how could she just leave me there?

After their confrontation with the vomiting monster-thing, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t assume anything else about Ada Wong; she was alter-nately flirtatious and standoffish, and if she’d learned how to shoot by playing paintball, he was a bank executive. But in spite of her confusing behavior and probable duplicity, he liked her; she was smart and confident, she was beautiful—and he had assumed there was a good, decent person beneath that contra-dictory facade ...

... and yet she left you to chase after the shooter, left you rolling on the floor with a bullet in your arm. Yeah, she’s great; you should propose.

He’d reached a split in the tunnel, and blocked out his wandering attempts to figure out Ada’s actions, reminding himself that he could ask her when he found her—//he found her. There was a locked gate to the right, so Leon turned left, peering uneasily into the thickening shadows as he trudged onward. He shouldn’t have let Claire go after Ada alone, he should have pulled himself together and gone with her—

He stopped, hearing something. Shots, distant and hollow, coming from somewhere up ahead, distorted by the winding maze of tunnels that made up the sewer system.

Still holding the Magnum tightly, Leon pressed his wrist against the bullet wound and started to run, the pain going sharp again, making him queasy. He couldn’t manage much better than a shagging jog, the water slowing him down almost as much as the nasty bite of the wound—but as the last echo of the shots faded away, he somehow found the motivation to go faster.

There was a dimly lit offshoot to the tunnel ahead and to the left, pale yellow light streaming out across the softly slopping water. Even before he reached it, he saw that he would have to make a choice. Straight in front of him was a platform of sorts, a heavy door set into the ragged bricks of the tunnel’s end, water dripping down from the ceiling in slender rivulets. An obvious choice, except—

Leon stopped in the elongated patch of murky light, looking down into the offshoot. Another door, and he didn’t have time to decide, the shots could have come from anywhere—

Barn-bam!

To the left. Leon jumped up from the tunnel, feeling new pain, feeling hot wetness against his wrist as the wound started to seep. He ignored it, hurrying to the door and pulling it open, hearing more rounds fired as he started down a wide and empty hall.

The corridor he’d entered was as shadowy and cold as the sewage tunnels, but much bigger, wider, pre-sumably some kind of transport hall for heavy equip-ment. It twisted left and then left again, boxes and a rack of steel canisters against the second comer, just past some kind of a loading door.

. . . acetylene, maybe oxy, good GOD what takes that many bullets and doesn’t die?

He heard another string of shots, splashing water—and a different sound, a deep and guttural hissing that chilled him to his core. Strangely familiar, but too loud to be possible.

A million snakes, a thousand giant cats, some pri-mordial, terrible dinosaur—

He ran, finally giving up trying to hold the bullet hole closed, needing his arm free to pump for more speed. The end of the tunnel was close, he saw a panel of blinking lights and an opening to the left, another huge loading door—

• and he stopped just short of running into the line of fire as another rapid succession of shots sounded, as a thundering crash of water sprayed out, water raining down on the floor in a thick sheet. “Stop, I’m coming in!” He shouted—

• and heard Ada’s voice, and felt a sweeping relief in spite of whatever horror was ahead.

“Leon!”

She’s alive!

Magnum raised, his wound bleeding freely now, he stepped in front of the open door—and saw Ada across a lake of churning muck, boxes and broken boards swimming through the turbulent liquid. She was standing on a small ledge of concrete be-neath a ladder, her Beretta pointed into the thrash-ing pool.

“Ada, what—“

Splash!

A giant burst out of the lake and slammed him off of his feet, knocking him back into the corridor. It happened so fast that he didn’t actually see it before he was flying through the air, his mind feeding him the picture as he hit the ground. He fell on his injured arm and cried out, as much from the shock of what he’d seen as from the stinging blast of pain.

• crocodile—

Leon was on his feet and stumbling away before he even knew he could get up—and the giant lizard, the croc that was thirty feet long if it was an inch, stepped into the corridor behind him with a mighty, bellowing roar. The cement trembled as the mammoth reptile crawled up from the waters of its home, gallons of black water streaming from its toothy, grinning jaws.

• jaws as big as me, bigger—

Leon ran, there was no pain, his heart hammering in a primal panic. It would eat him, it would shred him into a hundred screaming, bloody chunks—

• and the beast roared again, an impossibly low bellow that rattled his bones, that urged sweat to burst from every quaking pore—

• and Leon shot a look back, and saw that he was much, much faster than the grinning lizard. It was still climbing through the loading door, its tree-trunk legs short and squat, its incredible bulk too huge to maneuver so easily.

Leon swapped weapons in a daze of terror, his wound shrieking as he chambered a round into the Remington. He sidled backwards in an uneven gait, reaching a turn in the hall—

• and unloaded all five shells as quickly as he could pump them, the heavy rounds blasting the monster crocodile’s hideous snout.

It roared, swinging its head from side to side, blood erupting from its grinning face in buckets—but still it came, lumbering forward, dragging its armored tail from the pool of slime behind it.

Not enough, not enough power—

Leon turned and ran again, horrified at having to retreat, afraid of what would happen to Ada when he left the crocodile behind, but knowing that it would take another fifty rounds to stop it—that or a nuclear blast, and why was he still thinking, he needed to get away and then worry about what to do.

The booming steps of the giant filled his ears as he ran past the boxes, past the row of steel cylinders—

• and stopped running. His instincts cried out for sanity, but he had an idea—and as the terrible lizard took another twisting, thundering step, Leon turned and went back.

Let this work, it works in the movies, please God be listening—

The row of five gleaming canisters was inset on a thick shelf cut into the wall, held into place by a steel cable. There was a release button for the cable on the side of the shelf. Leon slapped it, and the heavy wire drooped, one looped end falling to the floor. Dropping the shotgun, he grabbed the closest of the cylinders, his muscles straining, blood pouring from his injured arm. He could feel thin, trickling trails of it sliding down his sweat-slick chest but didn’t stop, rocking back on his heels to free the can of com-pressed gas.

• there!

Leon jumped back as the silver can fell off the shelf, hitting the ground and rolling a few inches. He looked up and saw that the croc had covered another fifty feet—close enough for him to see the dull, dirty pits in its six-inch teeth as it roared again, close enough for him to smell the rotting-meat stench of its hot breath only a second later.

Leon raised one boot to the canister and shoved with all he had, the can lazily rolling back toward the gaining lizard. By some incredible stroke of fortune, the corridor floor had some slant to it; the two-hundred-plus pounds of cylinder seemed to pick up speed, spinning in the croc’s direction in a loose semicircle.

Backing away, he yanked the Magnum from his belt and pointed it at the shining can, forcing his fingers not to pull the trigger. The crocodile plodded forward, its tail slapping the walls so hard that stone dust rained down with each violent whip. Leon was in a state of total awe, in the grip of an instinctual terror so deep that it was all he could do not to turn and flee. Come on, you bastard—

Less than a hundred feet away, the crocodile and the canister met—and Leon pulled the trigger. The first shot pinged off the floor in front of the rocking can—and the grinning jaws opened, the massive beast lowering its head to catch at the obstacle, to push it aside.

• steady—

Leon fired again, and—

KA-BOOM!

• was thrown to the ground as the canister ex-ploded. In a blast of curled steel and igniting gases, the creature’s head was obliterated, disappearing like a popped balloon. Almost simultaneously, a wave of steaming gore hit Leon, bits of tooth and bone and shredded, smoking flesh clapping over him like a thick wet blanket.

Gagging, his ears ringing and arm bleeding, Leon sat up as the headless carcass settled to the floor, the legs crumpling beneath the brainless weight of the reptilian monster. He pressed his blood-covered hand against the wound, exhausted, sick, in pain—and as deeply satisfied as he’d felt in quite some time.

“Gotcha, you dumb shit,” he said, and smiled. When Ada came jogging up the corridor a moment later, that’s how she found him—staring at his handi-work in dazed and dizzy triumph, bloody and bleed-ing and grinning like a little kid.

TwEnfY-TnREE

LEON WAS WEARING A WHITE UNDERSHIRT

beneath his uniform; Ada tore it into strips and bandaged his arm with it, fashioning a kind of sling for him to wear once she’d slipped his ruined shirt back on. He’d lost enough blood to be dazed, almost helpless, and Ada used his mild shock to explain herself as she tended to him, feeling mildly shocked herself by the complex emotions that warred inside of her.

“... and I thought she looked familiar. I thought I’d met her through John, and I almost caught up to her—but she must have slipped past me. I got lost in the tunnels, trying to find my way back....” Nothing of truth, but Leon didn’t seem to notice—just as he didn’t seem to notice the gentle, careful way she touched him, or the very slight tremor in her voice as she apologized for a third time, for leaving him behind.

He saved my life. Again. And all I have to give him in return are lies, calculated deceit in exchange for his selflessness....

Something had changed for her when he’d taken the bullet in her stead, and she didn’t know how to change it back. Even worse, she didn’t know that she wanted to change it back. It was like the birth of a new feeling, some emotion that she couldn’t name but that seemed to fill her up; it was unsettling, uncomfort-able—and yet somehow, not altogether unpleasant. His clever solution to the problem of the nearly invincible crocodile—the creature that she’d only just been able to hold at bay, in spite of her best efforts—had made the unnamed feeling even stron-ger. The hole in his arm was only a flesh wound, but from the streaks of fresh blood across his smooth chest and stomach, she knew that it had been hurting bad—draining him, killing him as he’d worked to save her ass.

Get rid of him now, her mind hissed, leave him, don’t let this affect the job—the job, Ada, the mission. Your life.

She knew it was what she had to do, that it was the only thing to do—but when he was fixed up as best as she could manage, and her pathetic cover story had been told, she conveniently forgot to listen to herself. Ada helped him to his feet and led him away from the gut-splattered scene of the monster reptile’s demise, spouting off some nonsense about having found what looked like an exit when she’d been lost. Annette Birkin was gone; as soon as Leon had led the crocodile out of the dump, she’d scaled the ladder and checked—and seen that Annette had retained enough sense to start up the fans and lower the bridge before running, effectively blowing Ada’s other op-tions for escape. The woman was possibly psychotic, but not a moron—and although she’d been wrong about Ada’s source of purpose, she’d been dead on as to the purpose itself. To wrap the mission, Ada would have to get to the lab as quickly as she could, before Annette could do anything ... final—and Leon, si-lent and stumbling Leon, would add to her time by half.

Drop him! Lose the weight, you’re not a nursemaid, for Chrissake, this isn’t you, Ada—

“I’m thirsty,” Leon whispered, his breath warm across her neck. She looked up into his gore-stained, blinking face and found that the voice inside was easier to ignore this time. She’d have to leave him, of course, in the end there would have to be a parting of the ways—

“Then we’ll have to find you some water,” she said, and steered him gently in the direction she needed to g°.

Sherry woke up in the dark, a terrible, bitter taste in her mouth, a river of cold gunk tugging at her clothes. There was a rumbling sound all around her, a sound like the sky was falling, and for a second, she couldn’t remember what had happened or where she was—and when she realized that she couldn’t move, she panicked. The thundering sound was fading, fading and then gone—but she was stuck in some awful stinking river, pressed against cold, wet hardness, and she was alone.

She opened her mouth to scream—and then re-membered the screaming monster, the monster and then the giant bald man, and then Claire. Remember-ing Claire stopped her from screaming; somehow, the image of her was like a soothing touch, easing through the blind terror and allowing her to think. Got sucked into a drain hole, and now I’m—some-where else, and screaming won’t help.

It was a brave thought, a strong thought, and it made her feel better to think it. She pushed herself away from the hardness at her back, treading the dark water, and discovered that she wasn’t stuck at all; she had been up against a row of bars or openings in the rock, and the force of the current had held her there—held her, and probably saved her from drowning. The disgusting goop was flowing around her, tinkling and burbling like a regular old stream, not nearly as strong as before—and the bad taste in her mouth meant that she must have swallowed some of it. ...

Thinking that opened up the rest of her memory. She’d been floating along and then had gotten twisted somehow, and had gulped some of the horrible, chemical-tasting liquid and freaked out—passed out, she thought.

At least the noise had stopped, whatever that had been, a sound like a moving train, maybe, or a giant truck, roaring away .. . and now that she was more awake, she realized that she could see. Not very much, but enough to know that she was in a big room filled with water, and there was a tiny, feeble shaft of light coming down from high above.

There has to be a way out. Somebody built this place, they had to have a way out. . . .

Sherry swam a little farther into the big room, and kicking, she felt the toes of her shoes glance off against something hard. Something hard and flat. Feeling stupid for not thinking of it already, she took a deep breath, lowered her legs—and stood up. The water was all the way up to her shoulders, but she could stand.

The last traces of panic slipped away as she stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly, her eyes finally getting the most from the weak light—and saw the ladder shape against the far wall. She was still scared, no question, but the sight of the shadowy rungs meant she’d found the way out. Sherry lifted her feet and paddled toward the ladder, proud of how she was handling herself.

No screaming, no crying. Just like Claire said.

Strong.

She reached the ladder and pulled her knees up to the bottom rung, a few inches above the surface. She got her feet beneath her and started to climb, grimac-ing at the thick, slimy feel of the metal bars beneath

her pruned fingers. The ladder seemed to go on forever, and when she risked a look down to see how high she’d gone, she could only see a tiny, shimmering patch of the water’s lapping top where the light hit it directly. She could see the source of the light, too—a narrow slit in the ceiling, not much higher than where she was.

Almost to the top. And if I fall, I won’t get hurt.

There’s nothing to be scared of.

Sherry swallowed heavily, willing the thought to be true, and looked up again.

A few more rungs, and when she reached up for the next, her hand touched a bumpy metal ceiling. She felt a burst of accomplishment, pushing at it with one hand—

• and it didn’t move. Not at all.

“Shit,” she whispered, but it didn’t sound annoyed, the way she’d hoped; the word sounded small and lonely, almost like a plea.

Sherry hooked an elbow through the rung she was holding, touched her pendant for luck, and tried again, really pushing this time. Straining with all of her might, she thought she felt it give, just a little—but not anywhere near enough. She lowered her hand, cursing silently this time; she was trapped. For several minutes she didn’t move, not wanting to go back down into the water, not wanting to believe that she really was stuck—but her arms were getting tired, and she didn’t want to jump, either. Finally, she started down, much more slowly than she’d come up. Each step lower was like admitting defeat. She was perhaps a third of the way back to the water when she heard the footsteps overhead—a light thumping at first, more of a vibration than anything, but then quickly redefined into separate steps, getting louder. Then closer—and getting louder still, ap-proaching the top of the pit where she’d awakened. Sherry gave about a second’s thought to ignoring the footsteps and then scrambled up the ladder, deciding that it was worth the risk; it might not be Claire, or even anyone who meant her well—but it could be her only chance at escape.

She started shouting before she got back to the top.

“Hello! Help, can you hear me? Hello, hello!” The footsteps seemed to pause, and as she reached the ceiling again, still calling out, she hit the metal several times with her fist.

“Hello, hello, hello!”

Another smack with her decidedly sore hand—and suddenly she was hitting air, and a blinding light was in her face.

“Sherry! Oh, my God, sweetie, I’m so glad you’re okay!”

Claire, it was Claire, and Sherry couldn’t see her but was nearly overwhelmed with delight at the sound of her voice. Strong, warm hands helped her up, warm, damp arms were hugging her tightly. Sherry blinked and squinted, and started to be able to make out the features of a vast room through the brilliant white haze.

“How did you know it was me?” Claire asked, still holding her.

“Didn’t. But I couldn’t get out by myself, and I heard walking. . . ”

Sherry looked around at the big room that Claire had pulled her into, feeling stunned amazement that Claire had heard her at all. The room was huge, spanned by a series of thin metal catwalks laid out in diagonals—and the section of floor that she’d come out of was at the farthest corner of the darkest part of the room, the panel that Claire had lifted only a couple of feet across.

Man. If I hadn ‘t knocked, or if she’d been going any faster....

“I’m very glad it’s you,” Sherry said firmly, and Claire grinned, looking just as happy and amazed as Sherry felt.

Claire knelt in front of her, her smile fading a little. “Sherry—I saw your mom. She’s okay, she’s alive—“ “Where? Where is she?” Sherry blurted, excited by the news—but feeling a kind of nervous uncertainty tensing her muscles suddenly, making it hard to breathe.

She looked into Claire’s worried gray eyes, and saw that she was thinking about lying again—that she was trying to figure out the best way to tell her something unpleasant. Even a few hours ago, Sherry might have let her do it, too—

• but not anymore. Strong and brave we have to be.... “Tell me, Claire. Tell me the truth.”

Claire sighed, shaking her head. “I don’t know where she went. She was—scared of me, Sherry. I think she thought I was someone else, someone bad or crazy. She ran away from me—but I’m pretty sure she came this way, and I was trying to find her again when I heard you calling.”

Sherry nodded slowly, struggling to accept the idea that her mother had been acting weird—weird enough for Claire to try and sugar-coat it. “And you think she came in here?” Sherry asked finally.

“I can’t be positive. I also ran into this cop, Leon, before I saw your mother; I met him when I first got to the city, and he was in one of the tunnels I went through after you disappeared. He was hurt, he couldn’t come with me to look for you—so after your mom took off, I went back to get him, but he was gone.”

“Dead?”

Claire shook her head. “Nope. Just gone—so I backtracked, and as far as I can tell, this is the only way your mom could have gone. But like I said, I’m not sure. . . ”

She hesitated, frowning, gazing at Sherry thought-fully. “Did your mom ever tell you about something called the G-Virus?”

“G-Virus? I don’t think so.”

“Did she ever give you anything to hold onto, like a little glass container, something like that?” Sherry frowned back at her. “No, nothing. Why?” Claire stood up, putting her hand on Sherry’s shoulder and shrugging at the same time. “It’s not really important.”

Sherry narrowed her eyes, and Claire smiled again. “Really. Come on, let’s see if we can figure out where your mom went. I bet she’s looking for you.” Sherry let Claire lead the way, wondering why she was suddenly sure—almost certain, in fact—that Claire didn’t believe what she was saying. . . and

wondering why she couldn’t find it in herself to ask any more questions about it.

The factory machine lift, like the tram, was exactly where Annette had left it. The margin had surely tightened, but she was still ahead of the spies, of Ada Wong and her ragged little friend .. .

... lies, telling me lies like they all tell lies, as if losing William, suffering such pain and loss isn’t enough to shame them....

She fumbled the control key out of her torn lab coat pocket, leaning heavily against the mounted controls as she inserted the key and turned it. Her shaking fingers touched the activation switch and a trail of lights appeared on the console, too bright even in the moon-filled darkness. Cool autumn air brushed over her aching body, a friendly, secret wind that smelled like fire and disease ...

... like Halloween, like bonfires in the dark when they brought out their dead, burning the pestilent flesh of the plague-riddled bodies...

Four squealing, blaring honks sounded into the night sky, the massive elevator room telling her that it was time to go. Annette staggered up the gray and yellow steps, unable to remember what she’d been thinking about before. It was time to go, and she was so, so tired. How long had it been since she’d slept? She couldn’t remember that, either.

Hit my head, yes? Or just sleepy, may haps. .. . She’d been exhausted before, but the relentless pain of her injuries had sent her to some delirious place that she’d never imagined could exist. Her thoughts came in spiraling, uneasy bursts of feeling that she couldn’t seem to sort through, at least not to her satisfaction; she knew what had to be done—the triggering system, the subway gate opening, the hiding in the shadows and waiting to heal—but the rest had become some strange, disjointed grouping of free association, as if she’d taken some drug that had overloaded her senses, and would only let her think a bit at a time.

It was almost over. That was something she could hold on to, one of the only constants in her muddled mind. A positive and somehow magical phrase that she could still see, no matter how blind she became. On her way through the factory, she’d coughed and coughed and then vomited from the pain a thin and acidic string of bile that had made dark bubbles burst in front of her eyes, the darkness staying for so long that she thought she might actually lose her sight—

• it’s almost over.

Clutching the thought like a lost love, she found the latch to the metal room and went inside. The controls, pushed. The movement and sound of movement engulfing her as she lay across one soft metal bench and closed her eyes. A few moments of rest, and it was almost over.. ..

Annette sank into the dark, the humming motors lulling her into a deep and instant sleep. She was going down, her muscles relaxing, her aches and miseries loosening their hold—and for some endless reach of time, she found a silence—

• until a howling, terrible scream knifed into her darkness, a shriek of such fury and pain that it spoke for her heart, and she jerked back to life, panting and afraid—

• and then realized what had snapped her out of her dreamless sleep, and her thoughts came together, giving her one more clear and constant thing to hold on to.

It was William. William had come home, he had followed her—and Umbrella would have nothing, because the thing that had been her husband had come back into the blast radius.

The scream sounded again, this time echoing away into one of the lab’s many secret places as the lift went down and down.

Annette closed her eyes again, the new thought joining her lost love from before, the two of them together making her happy at last.

William has come home. It’s almost over.

The third followed naturally, added as she slipped back into the silence, knowing that she had to get up too soon, to begin the final journey. When the lift stopped, she’d wake up and be ready.

Umbrella will suffer for what they’ve done—and everybody dies at the very end.

She smiled, and fell asleep, dreaming of William.

LEON FINALLY STARTED TO FEEL LIKE HIMself again, sitting in the control room where Ada had left him. She’d found a medkit in one of the dust-covered cabinets, along with a bottle of water; she’d only been gone for about ten minutes, but the aspirin was starting to kick in, and the water had worked wonders.

He sat in front of a switch-covered console, trying to piece together what had happened after the explo-sion in the sewers; the last thing he really remembered clearly was seeing the headless crocodile collapse, and then being overwhelmed by a light-headed weakness. Ada had bandaged him up and then led him through tunnels—

• and a subway, we were on a subway for a minute or two—

• and finally to this room, where she’d told him to rest while she went to check on something. Leon had protested, reminding her that it wasn’t safe, but had still been too fuzzy to do much more than sit where she’d put him. He’d never felt so helpless, or so totally dependent on another person. Once he’d gulped about half of the gallon jug of water, though, he’d started to snap out of it. Apparently, blood loss tended to dehydrate ...

... so she gave me the water and then went to check on what, exactly? And how did she know to come this way?

He’d barely been able to walk, let alone ask any questions—but even in his delirium, he’d noticed how certain she was, how she’d chosen their path with unwavering precision. How could she know? She was an art buyer from New York, how could she know anything about the sewer system of Raccoon City? And where is she? Why hasn’t she come back? She’d helped him, she’d most probably saved his life—but he just couldn’t keep believing that she was who she said she was. He wanted to know what she was doing, and he wanted to know now, and not just because she’d been keeping secrets; Claire was still somewhere in the sewers, and if Ada knew the way out of the city, Leon owed it to her to try and find out. Leon stood up slowly, holding onto the back of the chair, and took a deep breath. Still weak, but no dizziness, and his arm didn’t hurt as badly, either—the aspirin, perhaps. He drew his Magnum and walked to the door of the small, dusty room, promis-ing himself that he wasn’t going to accept any more vague answers or smiling brush-offs.

He opened the door and stepped out into an open-ended warehouse almost big enough to be an aircraft hangar, it was empty, decrepit, and heavily shadowed, but the brisk night air that breezed through made it almost pleasant—

• and there was Ada, stepping onto a raised plat-form just outside of the hangar, disappearing behind what looked like a section of a train. It was an industrial transport lift—and from the well-oiled look of the rails that ran through the warehouse, it was one part of the abandoned factory that hadn’t been completely abandoned.

“Ada!”

Keeping his wounded arm tightly pressed to his body, Leon ran toward the lift—and felt dull anger as he heard the rising thrum of the transport’s engines, the heavy mechanical sound spilling out into the clear night sky. Ada was leaving, she hadn’t gone to “check” on anything—

• but she’s not going anywhere until she tells me why.

Leon ran out into the moonlit open, hearing the door to the transport slam shut as he skirted a control console and stepped up to the vibrating metal plat-form, nearly tripping on the brightly painted steps. Before he could catch his balance, the transport started its descent; three-foot-high panels of corru-gated metal rose all the way around the train, contain-ing the large platform as it slid smoothly down into the ground.

Leon grabbed for the door handle as the darkness swept up around the humming transport, the sky dwindling into a smaller and smaller starry patch overhead. The cool, pale light of the moon and stars was quickly replaced by the electric orange of the transport’s mercury lamps.

He stumbled inside, and saw the startled look on Ada’s face as she stood up from a bench bolted to one side, as she half-raised her Beretta and then lowered it again—and a flash of guilt, there and gone in the time it took for him to close the door.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, staring at each other as the room continued its smooth descent. Leon could almost see her working to come up with an explanation—and as tired as he was, he decided that he just wasn’t in the mood.

“Where are we going?” he asked, making no effort to keep the anger out of his voice.

Ada sighed—and sat down again, her shoulders sagging. “I think it’s the way out,” she said quietly. She looked up at him, her dark gaze searching his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to leave without you, but I was afraid. . . ”

He could hear real sorrow in her voice, see it in her eyes, and felt his anger give a little. “Afraid of what?” “That you wouldn’t make it. That 7 wouldn’t make it, trying to keep both of us safe.”

“Ada, what are you talking about?” Leon moved to the bench, sitting down beside her. She looked down at her hands, speaking softly.

“When I was looking for you, back in the sewers, I found a map,” she said. “It showed what looked like some kind of an underground laboratory or factory—and if the map was right, there’s a tunnel that runs from there to somewhere outside of the city.” She met his gaze again, honestly distressed. “Leon, I didn’t

think you were in any condition to make a trip like that, like this—and I was scared that if I brought you with me, if it was a dead end or some-thing attacked us. . . .”

Leon nodded slowly. She’d been trying to protect herself—and him.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I should have told you, I shouldn’t have just left you there like that. After all you’ve done for me, I—I at least owed you the truth.” The guilt and shame in her eyes wasn’t something that could be faked. Leon reached for her hand, ready to tell her that he understood and that he didn’t blame her—

• when there was a resounding thump outside. The entire transport shook, just a slight tremble, but enough to make both of them tense.

“Probably a rough spot in the track....” Leon said, and Ada nodded, gazing at him with an intensity that made him pleasantly uncomfortable, a warmth spreading through his entire body—

BAM!

• and Ada flew off the bench, thrown to the floor as a massive, curled thing slammed through the wall, crashing through the sheet metal of the vehicle’s side as though it were made of paper. It was a fist, a fist with bone claws, each of them nearly a foot long, the claws dripping with—

“Ada!”

The giant hand withdrew, its bloody talons ripping new holes in the metal wall as Leon dropped to the floor, grabbing Ada’s limp body, pulling her into the center of the transport. A terrible shriek pealed through the moving darkness outside—and it was the same furious cry that they’d heard in the station but louder, more violent—and even less human than before.

Leon held on to Ada with his one good arm, feeling the warm trickle of blood seeping out from her right side, feeling her dead weight against his heaving chest. “Ada, wake up! Ada!”

Nothing. He lowered her gently to the floor, then pulled at the bloody hole in her dress, just above her hip. Blood was welling up from two deep punctures; there was no way to tell how bad, and he ripped at the fabric, tearing off” the bottom few inches of her short dress and pressing the wadded material against the wound—

• and again the monster screamed, and the rage in its throaty howl was nothing to what Leon was feeling, staring down at Ada’s still and closed face. He stretched her tight dress over the makeshift bandage, fixing it in place as best he could, then stood up and unstrapped the Remington.

Ada had taken care of him, had protected him when he couldn’t protect himself. Leon loaded the shotgun grimly, feeling no pain at all as he prepared to return the favor.

When they reached what looked like the end of the line, it was Sherry who figured out where her mother must have gone. They’d walked into yet another open, shadowy room, but it only had the one door; there seemed to be no other way out of the cavernous chamber, unless Annette had jumped off the raised floor and trekked off through the unlit emptiness that surrounded them.

They stood at the edge of the darkness, trying to see down into the shadows and having no luck. The room was set up almost like a loading dock: a railed platform ran from the door along the back wall, then

ended abruptly, giving way to a seemingly endless void. Either Annette had climbed down and navi-gated some secret path through the dark, or Claire had been mistaken about which way she’d gone. So what now? Go back, or try to follow?

She didn’t want to do either one—although going back pretty much beat the crap out of the idea of walking into a pitch-black abyss. And Leon was probably still back there somewhere . . . “Could it be a train? Is this like a train station?” Sherry asked, and as soon as she said “train,” Claire gave herself a solid mental kick in the ass. Platform, railings, about a thousand overhead “pipes.”...

Claire grinned at Sherry, shaking her head at her own stupidity; she was getting flaky, no doubt about it.

“Yeah, I think it is,” she said, “though you guessed it, not me. My brain must be on strike. .. ” The small computer console on one side of the platform, the one she’d dismissed as unimportant, was probably the control board. Claire headed for it, Sherry following along and clutching absently at her gold locket as she described the noises she’d heard, down in the drainage well.

“... and it was moving away, like a train would. It scared me pretty bad, too. It was loud.”

Sure enough, just beneath the small monitor screen on the standing console was a recall command code and a ten-key. Claire tapped in the code and hit “enter”—and the chamber was filled with the smooth hum of working machinery: the sound of a train. “You’re one smart cookie, you know that?” Claire said, and Sherry practically beamed, her entire face crinkling with her sweet smile. Claire wrapped an arm around her shoulders and they walked back to the edge of the platform to wait.

The tram’s light appeared after a few seconds, the tiny circle of brightness getting bigger as they watched. After the trials they’d been through, Claire decided to be as fantastically optimistic about this new development as she could—primarily to keep from worrying about what horrible thing would prob-ably happen next. The train would lead out of the city, of course, and it would be well-stocked with food and water; it’d have showers and fresh, warm clothes—

• nah, scratch that. A hot tub, and a couple of those thick terry robes, for after. And slippers. Nice, but she’d settle for anything that didn’t in-clude monsters or crazy people. She glanced at Sher-ry, and noticed that she was still rubbing her locket. “So what’s in there?” she asked, wanting to make Sherry smile again. “You got a picture of your boy-friend, or what?”

“Inside? Oh, it’s not a locket,” Sherry said, and Claire was pleased to see a faint blush rise in her cheeks. “My mom gave it to me, it’s a good-luck charm—and I don’t have a boyfriend. Boys my age are totally immature.”

Claire grinned. “Get used to it, sweetie. As far as I can tell, some of them never grow out of it.” The train was close enough now for them to see its shape, a single car about twenty or twenty-five feet long riding smoothly along its overhead track. “Where do you think it goes?” Sherry asked, and before Claire could answer, the door to the platform exploded.

The hatch blew inward, torn off its hinges in a squeal of metal and clanging to the floor—

• and Claire grabbed Sherry, pulling her close as the towering Mr. X stepped into the room, bending low and sideways to squeeze through the opening, his soulless gaze turning toward them at once. “Get behind me!” Claire shouted, pulling Irons’s handgun, risking a glance back at the approaching train. Ten seconds, they needed ten seconds—

• but X took a giant step toward them, and she knew they didn’t have them. His bland, terrible face, expressionless, his giant hands already rising, still twenty feet away but only four steps in his massive stride—

“Get on the train when it stops!” Claire screamed, and pulled the trigger.

Four, five, six shots, beating into his chest. The seventh hit one dead-white cheek, but Mr. X didn’t blink, didn’t bleed—and didn’t stop. Another mighty step, the black, smoking pit in his face a testament to his inhumanity. Claire lowered her aim, legs, knees—

Bam-bam-bam!

• and he paused as the rounds smashed into him, at least one a direct hit to his left knee, the black eyes fixed on her, marking her—

“—here, come on!”

Sherry was pulling at her vest, screaming, and Claire backed away, squeezing the trigger again. Two more rounds hit him in the gut—

• and then she was on the train, and Sherry had found the control for the door. It whooshed shut, Mr. X framed in the tiny window, not coming forward anymore but still not falling. Not dying. “Follow me!” Claire shouted, spotting the board of blinking lights to her right, knowing that the door wouldn’t hold for a second if the giant, terrible creature started walking again.

She ran for the control board with Sherry at her side, thanking God that the designer had been user-friendly as the red “go” button snapped down be-neath her shaking hand—

• and the train was moving, sliding away from the platform, away from the indestructible un-man and into the black.

Annette sat in the staff bunk room on level four, waiting for the mainframe to respond to the power-up and debating whether or not to initiate the P-Epsilon sequence. Once the fail-safe system was triggered, all of the connecting corridor doors would unlock, and those doors that were electronically powered would open. The creatures that had been trapped these last days would be free to roam, and most of them would be hungry ...

... hungry and hot, bleeding pure virus from their clotted flesh ...

She didn’t want to run into any—unpleasantness upon her departure, but as the first lines of code spilled across the screen, she decided against running the sequence. The P-Epsilon gas was an experiment anyway, something a couple of the microbiologist techs had worked up to appease the Umbrella damage-control staff. If it worked, it would knock out the Re3s and all of the human carriers that had been infected by the initial airborne—the first wave—en-suring her a safer trip to the escape transport tunnel; but the spies were coming, and Annette didn’t want to make things easy for them. She’d heard the lift being recalled as she’d stumbled her way to the synthesis lab—which was fine, great, they’d be just in time for the finale, and she wanted them fighting for their lives as she sped away from the facility, away from the brilliant explosion that would consume the multibillion-dollar facility...

... and it’ll burn, it’ll all burn and I’ll be free of this nightmare. Endgame and I win. Umbrella loses, once and for all, the sneaking, murdering animal bas-tards—

She felt good, awake and aware and in very little pain; she’d meant to go straight to the nearest com-puter outlet upon her return to activate the fail-safe even before collecting the sample, but she’d barely been able to see straight as she’d stumbled off the lift; she’d been afraid of forgetting something—or worse, of falling and being unable to get up again. A trip to the meds locker in the synthesis lab had fixed all that; already, the terrible pain was a distant memory, along with the bizarre, deluded thought processes that had made it so hard to concentrate. When her little cocktail shot wore off, she’d pay for the temporary reprieve, but for the next couple of hours, at least, she was as good—she was better—than new.

Epinephrine, endorphin, amphetamine, oh my! Annette knew she was high, that she shouldn’t overestimate her abilities, but why shouldn’t she feel happy? She grinned at the small computer in front of her and started to tap in the codes, her fingers flying over the keys, feeling like her teeth would crack as the synthetic adrenaline pounded through her dilated veins. She’d made it back to the lab, William had come back, and the sample, the very last viable G-Virus sample in the facility, was tucked into her pocket. She’d hidden it in one of the fuse cases before she’d gone looking for William, and picked it up on the way to the staff room—

• 76E, 43L, 17A, fail-safe time... 20, vocal warning/power cut, 10, personal authorization, OOOlBirkin—

• and that was it. Annette couldn’t stop grinning, didn’t want to stop as she lightly stroked the “entef’ key, the triumph a hot and liquid joy spinning through her numb and tattered flesh. One touch, and there was nothing on earth that could stop it. In ten minutes, the taped warnings would start to run, and the transport lift would shut down, cutting the facility off from the surface; in fifteen, the audio would begin the countdown—five minutes to reach the minimum safe distance by train, another five and—

Boom. Twenty minutes before the explosion. More than enough time to get to the tunnel and power up the train, no matter what is loosed; enough time to speed away from the ticking dock, beneath the city streets, through the isolated foothills at the outskirts of Rac-coon. Enough time to get to the end of the track, walk out into the private plot of land, turn around—and see Umbrella lose it all.

As the clock ticked to zero, the plastique fail-safe charges in the laboratory’s central power core would be activated. Even if all but one of the twelve explo-sive packets failed, that one blast would be enough to set off the secondary charges that were built into the walls themselves; Umbrella’s fail-safe system had been designed to take it all down. The lab would become an inferno, blasting up into the dead city, visible for miles—and she’d be there to see it, to know that she’d done what she could to make things right.

This is for you, William. . . .

The thought was bittersweet... for some time, they hadn’t—enjoyed their relationship as husband and wife. William was so brilliant, so devoted to the work, that the pleasures of synthesis and development had taken the place of the perks of married life. She had come to recognize his genius, to learn the joy of supporting him without the nuisance of relationship struggles—but now, her finger resting on the end to it all, she found herself suddenly wishing very much that there had been more between them in the last few years, more than her adoration for his incredible gifts, his appreciation of her assistance....

This is our last kiss, my love. This is my contribution to the work, my final loving act for what we shared. Yes, that was right, that was the feeling. Annette pressed the key, her heart singing, and saw the locked code flash across the monitor in glowing green. “I respectfully tender my resignation,” she said softly, and started to laugh.

TwEntY-FlVE

THE DARK SLID PAST THE MOVING PLATform, metal darkness bathed in murky orange light, and whatever had punched through the wall of the transport was gone. Leon had edged his way around the enclosed room twice, and seen nothing at all, heard nothing but the smooth hum of the working motors.

When the creature finally howled from the shadows atop the roof, and Leon snapped the shotgun up, what he saw actually made him freeze. In the second it took him to really see it, his vengeful fury blew away like so much dust, replaced by an absolute bone-chilling awe. Holy shit—

The thing was still shrieking, its head thrown back, the brutal, gurgling scream like the voice of hell in the moving dark. It had been a man, once—arms and legs, shreds of clothing still hanging from its hulking body—but everything human about it had changed, was still changing as it bellowed its rage into the cold black, and Leon could only stare.

Its body was swollen and rippling with strange muscles, the bare chest puffed and bloated with its endless scream. Its right arm was six inches longer than the left, the stained bone claws jutting from the pulsing hand. And the bulbous moving tumor in its right bicep looked like nothing so much as an eyeball the size of a dinner plate, jerking wetly from side to side as if searching—

• and the scream was changing, too, getting deep-er, rougher, the shaggy face falling forward—and melting into its chest. Like hot wax, like a movie effect, the creature’s head flowed into its upper body, disappearing smoothly into the inflamed and greedy skin—

• and at the same time, another face was forming, growing, rising up from the back of its neck with a horrible snapping sound, like fingers being broken. Slitted eyes cracked open, a bony red hole of a mouth forming, taking up the furious cry with a new voice—

• and Leon squeezed the trigger in denial, a denial of the monster’s unholy existence. Boom!

The shot hit its chest, and a thick, purplish blood sprayed out, cutting off the creature’s scream—but that was all it did. The monster’s new face angled toward Leon, the domed head tilting—

• and it hopped down onto the platform, landing in a half-crouch on legs as big around as Leon’s chest. It took one jumping, crooked step forward and was close enough for Leon to smell the strange, chemical musk that poured from its glistening skin—and see that the wound on its chest had stopped bleeding, that the strange flesh was eating the tiny holes. The creature raised its mighty claw and Leon stumbled backwards, pumping another round and firing as the talons came down—

• shhink!

• and sparks flew up from the metal rail as the shot blasted into the creature’s stomach, more purplish fluid spattering from its body. The almost point-blank range of the heavy round barely fazed the towering monster. It took another step, and Leon backed away, pumping another round—

• and he tripped on the steps that led up to the transport room, tripped and fell on his ass, the round going high over the creature’s bullet-shaped head. One more step and it would be on him—

dead I’m—

• except it didn’t take the step. Instead, it turned toward the railing, its bizarre head tilting, the pits of its rudimentary nostrils flaring—

• and silently, almost gracefully, it leapt over the edge of the platform, out into the passing darkness. For a moment, Leon didn’t move. He couldn’t, he was too busy trying to understand that the monster hadn’t killed him. It had smelled or sensed some-thing, it had broken off the attack that it most certainly would have won—and had jumped off the moving transport.

I’m not dead. It’s gone, and I’m not dead.

Why, he didn’t know, and couldn’t begin to guess. Accepting that he was alive was enough—and a short time later, maybe no more than a few seconds, his knotted thoughts and senses told him that the trans-port was slowing down, that the shaft was getting lighter, the blackness washing to gray.

Leon crawled to his feet and went to check on Ada.

Sherry had heard the monster from far away, from somewhere deep in the giant hole, and felt even more scared than she had when the giant—Mr. X, Claire called him—had come into the train station. Claire had said it probably wasn’t even the monster, that it was most likely some machine problem, but Sherry

wasn’t convinced. The sound was so distant and strange that it could have been something else......but

what if it isn’t? What if Claire’s wrong? They stood outside a warehouse in the chill of the dark, stood over the big hole in the ground and waited for the mechanical noises to stop. The almost-full moon was low in the sky, and Sherry could tell by the deep blue light of the horizon that it was very early in the morning; she didn’t feel tired, though. She felt scared and anxious, and even with Claire holding her hand she didn’t want to go down into the black hole where the monster could be.

After what seemed like a long time, the humming noise of the machinery stopped, and Claire stepped back from the hole—the transport shaft, she said—and turned back toward the warehouse.

“Let’s go see if we can recall the—Sherry?” Sherry hadn’t moved to follow her. She stared down into the hole, holding her charm and wishing that she was brave like Claire—but she wasn’t, she knew she wasn’t, and she didn’t want to go down into the dark.

I can’t, I can’t go down there, I’m NOT like Claire and I don’t care if that’s where my mom went, I don’t care at all—

Sherry felt warmth across her back and looked up, startled, to see that Claire had taken oflFher vest and was slipping it over her shoulders.

“I want you to have this,” Claire said, and in spite of her fear, Sherry felt a sudden rush of confused happiness.

“But—why? It’s yours, and you’ll get cold.. .” Claire ignored her for a minute, helping her put it on. It was too big for her and it had some dirt on it, but it was the coolest thing Sherry thought she’d ever worn.

For me. She wants me to have it.

Claire knelt in front of her, now wearing only a thin black T-shirt and shorts. She looked at her very seriously, pulling the vest closed over Sherry’s chest. “I want you to have it because I can tell that you’re scared,” she said firmly, “and I’ve had it for a long time, and when I wear it, I feel like I can kick ass. Like nothing can stop me. My brother has a leather jacket with the same design on the back, and he kicks ass—but he got the idea from me.”

She smiled suddenly, a tired, warm smile that made Sherry forget about the monster, just for a minute. “So now it’s yours, and every time you wear it, I want you to remember that I think you are the best twelve-year-old who ever walked.”

Sherry smiled back, hugging the faded pink denim to her body. “And it’s a bribe, huh?”

Claire nodded without hesitation. “Yes. And it’s a bribe. So what do you say?”

Sighing, Sherry reached for her hand, and they walked back into the warehouse to find the controls for the elevator.

Ada woke up as Leon set her gently on a creaking cot, woke up with a pounding headache and a pain in her side. Her first thought was that she’d been shot—but as she opened her eyes, and Leon’s worried, pale face swam into focus, she remembered.

He was going to kiss me, I think—and then . . .

“What happened?”

Leon reached down and brushed her hair off of her forehead, smiling a little. “A monster happened. The same one that got Bertolucci, I think. It put its hand through the wall of the transport and knocked you over. You hit your head, after it—clawed you.” Virus!

Ada struggled to sit up, to look at the wound, but the headache knocked her back. She reached up and carefully touched the throbbing spot just over her left temple, wincing at the feel of the sticky lump. “Hey, just stay put,” Leon said. “The wound isn’t too bad, but you took a pretty serious knock. . . ” Ada closed her eyes, trying to collect herself. If she’d been infected, there wasn’t anything she could do about it now—and really, what an irony that would be—if it was Birkin who’d stabbed her and he was still hot, she’d end up collecting a G-Virus sample in an extremely personal way.

Deep breath, keep it together. You’re not in the transport anymore, what does that tell you? “Where are we?” she asked, opening her eyes. Leon shook his head. “I’m not sure. Like you said, it’s an underground lab or factory of some kind. The transport is just outside. I brought you to the closest room.”

Ada turned her aching head enough to see the small windows, over a cluttered counter, looking out into the transport bay.

Gotta be fourth level, where the lift stops.. . .

The main synthesis lab was on the fifth level. Leon was staring down at her so sincerely, his bright blue gaze so achingly tender, that for just a few seconds, Ada thought about aborting the mission. They could go down to the escape tunnel together, they could hop on the train and get out of the city. They could run away, run far, far away—

• and then what? Call Trent and tell him that you’ll offer a refund? Sure. Then maybe you can meet Leon’s parents, get a ring, buy a little white house with a picket fence, have a couple of kids ... you could take up crochet, and rub his feet when he comes home from a hard day busting drunks and making traffic stops. Happily ever after....

Ada closed her eyes again, unable to look at him as she spoke.

“My head hurts pretty bad, Leon, and the tunnel I saw, on that map—I don’t know where it is,

ex-actly_” “I’ll find it,” he said softly. “I’ll find it, and then I’ll come back for you. Don’t worry about

anything, okay?”

“Be careful,” she whispered, and then felt his soft lips graze her forehead, heard him stand up and move toward the door.

“Just stay here, I’ll be back soon,” he said, and the door opened and closed, and she was alone. He’ll be okay. He’ll get lost trying to find the tunnel, he’ll come back, he’ll see that I’m gone and take the lift back to the surface... I can find the sample and escape, and it will be over.

Ada counted a minute and then sat up slowly, grimacing at the pounding in her skull. A bad knock indeed, but not a debilitating one; she could function. There was a noise outside, and Ada stood up, walking to one of the small windows. She knew the sound even before she looked, and felt her heart sink a little; the transport was heading up, probably recalled to the factory by an Umbrella team ...

. .. which means I don’t have a lot of time. And if they find him—

No, Leon would be okay. He was a fighter, he had the sense to run from danger, he was strong and decent—and he didn’t need to have someone like her in his life. She’d been crazy to consider it, even for a moment. It was time to wrap things up, to do what she’d come to do, to remember who she was—a freelance agent, a woman with no qualms about stealing or killing to complete a job, a cool and efficient thief who could take pride in a career with no misses. Ada Wong always walked away with the goods, and it would take more than a few hours with one blue-eyed cop to make her forget it.

Ada pulled the key cards and master from her pouch and opened the door, telling herself that she was doing the right thing—and hopeful that in time she’d come to believe it.

TwEnfY-Slx

ANNETTE HAD RUN INTO SOME TROUBLE.

The trip down to the cargo room hadn’t been bad; she’d only run across one carrier, one of the first-stagers, and had blown a hole into its ashy, withered skull with the first shot. She’d passed under a sleeping Re3, but it hadn’t stirred from its ceiling bed, and it

seemed that the other creatures still lurking in the facility shadows hadn’t yet figured out that they were

free. Either that, or more of them had disintegrated into mush than she’d imagined ... in any case, she’d be gone before she had to worry about it either way. In all, she made it to the cargo room hall in under three minutes, and had punched in the key code with a sense of grand accomplishment; the high from the shot was wearing off, but she was still feeling good—

• until the hatch to the cargo room refused to open. Annette had tapped the simple code in a second time, more carefully—and nothing. It was one of the only doors in all the facility that didn’t open automat-ically on fail-safe triggering, but it shouldn’t have been a problem—there was a verification disk in the slot beneath the controls, the disk that was always there in spite of Umbrella’s insistence that only the section heads were supposed to have access—

• and of course, upon checking, she’d seen that it wasn’t there, that it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Someone had taken it.

Annette stood in front of the locked hatch in the empty hall and felt the first bright tendrils of panic reach into her mind, a hysteria that she couldn’t allow to take hold.

The lab’s going to blow up, and I’ve wasted four, almost five minutes now and where’s the goddamn disk?

“Easy, take it easy, you’re okay, it’s okay. .. ” A gentle echo, a whisper of reason in the shining hall. She’d simply have to take the elevator from a different level; she had the master key, she had a weapon, she had time. Not as much, but enough. Breathing deeply, Annette started back toward the hall that led to the stairs, reminding herself that all was well and that it didn’t really matter, that Umbrel-la was going to pay whether or not she made it out alive. She didn’t want to die, she wasn’t going to die, but the gleaming, blood-splattered corridors and once-sterile labs were going to burn either way, so there was no need to panic—

• and as she turned right and moved quickly down the connecting hall, her footsteps loud and hollow in the silence, a ceiling panel crashed down in front of her—

• and an Re3, a licker, dropped to the floor and screamed for her blood. No!

Annette fired, but only hit its scrabbling shoulder as it darted forward, reaching out with one deformed claw to swipe at her. She felt a sharp red pain in her forearm, and fired again, shocked and disbelieving—

• and the second one caught it in the throat, and it screamed, blood spraying from its torn neck, its trumpeting shriek a garbled and spitting cry as it lunged at her again.

The third shot blew into the gray jelly of its brain, and it flopped to a spasming stop just inches from her trembling legs.

Gasping as she realized how close she’d been, Annette looked down at her bleeding arm, at the thick scratches that had torn through her lab coat—

• and something gave. Something in her mind.

Her racing mind, her pounding heart, the blood and the licker, William’s licker, dead on the floor in front of her—all these things whirled and danced, spinning into a circle that came together and focused into a single, stunningly simple thought. A thought that made sense of it all.

It was so clear, so crystal clear. She couldn’t run from pain, because pain would find her wherever she ran; she had proof, dripping down her arm. William had understood, but had lost himself before he could explain, before he could tell her what she really needed to do. She had to confront her attackers, and make sure they understood—that the G-Virus wasn’t theirs—because it didn’t belong to them.

But will they understand? Can they?

Maybe, maybe not. But she was so overwhelmed by the profound simplicity of the truth, she knew that she had to try, to make them see. The work was William’s. It was his legacy, and now it was hers; she’d known that before, but now she knew it, a ray of light in her mind that made everything else trivial. Not theirs. Mine.

She’d have to find them, tell them, and once they accepted the truth of it, they would have to leave her alone—and then, if there was still time, she could go her own way.

But first, she needed another shot. Smiling, her eyes wide and starry, Annette stepped over the licker and started for the stairs.

Leon thought he heard shots.

He was in some kind of a surgical bay, the first room at the end of the first passage that he’d taken after leaving Ada, and he looked up from the pile of crumpled papers he’d found, listening—but the dis-tant cracks didn’t repeat, so he went back to his search. He rifled quickly through the pages, desperate to find anything besides the endless lists of numbers and letters beneath the Umbrella letterhead. Come on, there must be something useful in all this....

He wanted out, he wanted to get Ada and get the hell out. The disemboweled corpse slumped in the corner was reason enough, but it was more than that—the very air of the room, of the hall outside the room, and, he was willing to bet, of every room in the facility, was just wrong. It stank like death, but worse, there was an atmosphere of something darker, some-thing amoral. Evil.

They performed experiments here, they ran tests and God knows what else here—and they’d created a zombie plague, they’d created the monstrous demon that attacked Ada, they’d murdered an entire city. Whatever they meant to do, they were practicing evil.

• Evil on a grand scale; the transport had taken them into a secret Umbrella facility, and it was a big one. From the numbers on the walls, he knew he was on the fourth floor, whatever that meant—and the catwalk he’d taken to get to the strange operating room, only one of three choices, had stretched over what had to be sixty or seventy feet of open space, the bottom to it lost in shadow. He didn’t know how deep he and Ada had come, and he didn’t really care; what he wanted was a map like the one she’d found in the sewers, a clear and simple diagram with an arrow pointing to out.

And it ain’t here....

Frustrated, Leon pushed the useless papers aside—and saw there was a computer disk lying on the steel table that had been hidden beneath the stack of chemical readouts. He picked it up, frowning—“For Cargo Room Verification” was printed on the label in smudged block letters.

Sighing, Leon slipped it into his pocket and rubbed at his aching eyes with his right hand, his left arm basically useless again after carrying Ada from the lift. He didn’t want to look for a computer to see what was on the disk, he didn’t want to go wandering from room to room looking for the exit, seeing what atrocities Umbrella had played with before they’d shut themselves down. He was tired and in pain and worried about Ada . . . and he decided, as he walked back to the door, that he should go back and talk to her. He’d wanted to ease her mind, saying that he would find the way out, but the place was just too goddamn huge; if she even knew the direction, or could remember the floor number....

Leon opened the door, stepped into the hall—

• and a woman with a gun was standing in front of him, a nine-millimeter pointed at his chest. She was bleeding, thin streams of crimson pouring from one arm and dripping down her dirty white lab coat—and the look on her face, the strange, wide-eyed glassy look that played across her features, told him that making any sudden moves would be a very bad idea. Oh, Jesus, what is this?

“You murdered my husband,” she said, “you and your partner and the girl, too—all of you, you wanted to dance on his grave but / have news for you!” She was high on something, he could hear it in her high, trembling voice and see it by the way her skin twitched and ticked. He kept his hands at his sides, kept his voice low and calm.

“Ma’am, I’m a police officer, and I’m here to help, okay? I don’t want to hurt you, I just—“ The woman dipped her bloody hand into her pock-et and held up something, a glass tube full of some purple fluid. She grinned wildly, raising it over her head, the gun still trained on his chest. “Here it is! It’s what you want, isn’t it? Listen to me, do you hear me? It isn ‘t yours! Do you understand what I’m saying? William made it, and I helped him, and it doesn’t belong to you!”

Leon nodded, speaking slowly. “It doesn’t belong to me, you’re right. It’s yours, absolutely—“ The woman wasn’t even listening. “You think you can take it, but I’ll stop you, I’ll keep you from taking it—there’s plenty of time, time for me to kill you and Ada and anyone else who tries to take it!” Ada—

“What do you know about Ada?” Leon barked, taking a half-step toward the madwoman, no longer feeling so calm. “Did you hurt her? Tell me!” The woman laughed, a humorless, insane cackle. “Umbrella sent her, you stupid shit! Ada Wong, Miss Love-em-and-leave-em herself! She seduced John to get the G-Virus but it’s not hers, either! It’s not, it’s NOT YOURS IT’S MINE—“ A massive shock rocked the floor, pitching Leon to the ground, a rumbling vibration that shook the walls—

• and crash, pipes and plaster rained from the ceiling, a thick beam striking the woman down with a dull thump. Leon covered his head as bits of concrete and white chunks of drywall slapped at him—

• and it was over. Leon sat up, staring at the woman in shock, not sure what had happened. She wasn’t moving. The metal beam that had struck her still hanging from the ceiling, one of her arms pinned beneath it—