Are you with anyone, Jill?" His dark eyes were narrowed with suspicion, the black bore of his semi-
automatic unwavering.
"Barry's here, too - Enrico, what happened?
What's this about?"
As Barry stepped out from behind the corner,
Enrico stared at them both for a long moment, his
gaze darting back and forth nervously and then he
sagged, lowering his gun as he fell back against the
stones. Barry and Jill hurried over, crouching down
next to the wounded Bravo.
"I'm sorry," he said weakly. "I had to make
sure..."
It was as though defending himself had taken his
last bit of strength. Jill took his hand gently, alarmed
at how pale he was. Blood oozed from his thigh, his
pants soaked with it.
"This whole thing was a set-up," he breathed,
turning his watering gaze toward her. "I got lost, I climbed the fence, saw the tunnels . . . found the
paper . . . Umbrella knew, all along..."
Barry looked stricken, his face almost as white as
Enrico's. "Hang on, Rico. We'll get you out of here, you just have lie still."
Enrico shook his head, still looking at Jill. "There's a traitor in the S.T.A.R.S.," he whispered. "He told me. . ."
Bam! Bam!
Enrico's body jumped as two holes suddenly ap-
peared in his chest, blood pulsing out of them in
violent spurts. Through the resounding echo of the
shots, running footsteps clattered away down the
corridor behind them.
Barry launched to his feet and sprinted around the
corner as Jill helplessly squeezed Enrico's twitching
hand, her heart pounding and sick. He slumped over,
dead before he touched the cold stone floor.
Her mind flooded with questions as Barry's pursu-
ing footsteps faded away, silence settling once again
over the deep shadows. What paper had the Bravo
found? When Enrico had said "traitor" she'd imme-
diately thought of Barry, acting so strangely, but
he'd been right beside her when the shots had been
fired.
So who did this? Who was Trent talking about? Who
did Enrico see?
Feeling lost and alone, Jill held his cooling hand
and waited for Barry to come back.
Rebecca was going through an old trunk pushed
against one wall of the room they'd entered, shuffling
through stacks of papers and frowning while Chris
checked out the rest of the room. A single, rumpled
cot, a desk, and a towering, ancient bookshelf were
the only other pieces of furniture. After the cold, alien
splendor of the mansion, Chris was absurdly grateful to be in simpler surroundings.
They'd come to a house at the end of the long,
winding path from the courtyard, much smaller and
infinitely less intimidating than the mansion. The hall
they'd stepped into was plain, undecorated wood, as
were the two small bedrooms they'd discovered just
off the silent corridor. Chris figured they'd found a
bunkhouse for some of the mansion's employees.
He had noticed the thick, unmarked dust in the
hallway on their way in with a sinking resignation,
realizing that none of the other S.T.A.R.S. had made
it out of the main house. With no way for him and
Rebecca to get back, all they could do was try to find
the back door and go for help. Chris didn't like it, but
there weren't any other options.
After a brief perusal of the shelves, Chris walked to
the battered wooden desk and pulled at the top
drawer; it was locked. He bent down and felt along the
bottom of the drawer, grinning as his fingers touched
a thick piece of tape.
Don't people ever watch movies? The key's always
stuck under the drawer.
He peeled the tape away and came up with a tiny
silver key. Still grinning, he unlocked the drawer and
pulled it open.
There was a deck of playing cards, a few pens and
pencils, gum wrappers, a crumpled pack of ciga-
rettes - junk, mostly, the kind of stuff that always
seemed to accumulate in desk drawers. . .
Bingo!
Chris picked up the key ring by its leather tag,
pleased with himself. If finding the exit was this easy,
they'd be on their way back to Raccoon in no time.
"Looks like we just got a break," he said softly, holding up the keys. The leather tag had the word
"Alias" burned into one side, the number "345"
written on the back in smudged ball-point pen. Chris
didn't know the significance of the number, but he
remembered the nickname from the diary he'd found
in the mansion.
Thank you, Mr. Alias. Assuming the keys were for the bunkhouse, they were that much closer to getting
off the estate.
Rebecca was still sitting by the trunk, surrounded
by papers, envelopes, even a few grainy photos that
she'd pulled out. She seemed totally absorbed in
whatever she was reading, and when Chris walked
over to join her, she looked up at him with eyes
clouded by worry.
"You find something?"
Rebecca held up the piece of paper she was reading.
"A couple of things. Listen to this: 'Four days since
the accident and the plant at Point 42 is still growing
and mutating at an incredible rate. . .'"
She skipped ahead, skimming the page with one
finger as she spoke. "It calls this thing Plant 42, and says its root is in the basement. . . here. 'Shortly after
the accident, one of the infected members of the
research team became violent and broke the water
tank in the basement, flooding the entire section. We
think some trace chemicals used in the T-virus tests
contaminated the water and contributed to Plant 42's
radical mutations. A number of shoots have already
been traced to different parts of the building, but the
main plant now hangs from the ceiling in the large
conference room on the first floor. . . “
" 'We've determined that Plant 42 has become
sensitive to movement and is now carnivorous. In
close proximity to humans, it uses tentacular, prehen-
sile vines to entrap its prey while leechlike adap-
tations latch onto exposed skin and draw fatal
quantities of blood; several members of the staff have
already fallen victim to this.' It's dated May twenty-first,
signed Henry Sarton."
Chris shook his head, wondering again how some-
one could invent a virus like the one they had come
across. It seemed to infect everything it touched with
madness, transforming its carrier into a deadly carni-
vore, hungry for blood.
God, now a man-eating plant. . .
Chris shuddered, suddenly twice as glad that they'd
be leaving soon.
"So it infects plants, too," he said. "When we
report this, we'll have to. . ."
"No, that's not it," she said. She handed him a
photo, her expression grim.
It was a blurry snapshot of a middle-aged man
wearing a lab coat. He was standing stiffly in front of a
plain wooden door, and Chris realized that it was the
very door they'd come through not ten minutes ago,
the front entrance to the bunkhouse.
He flipped the picture over, squinting at the tiny
script on the back. "H. Sarton, January '98, Point 42." He stared at Rebecca, finally understanding her
fearful gaze. They were standing in Point 42. The
carnivorous plant was here.
Wesker stood in the darkness of the unlit tunnel, his
irritation growing as he listened to Barry stumble
through the echoing corridors. Jill wouldn't wait
forever, and the raging Mr. Burton couldn't seem to
grasp that Enrico's killer had simply slid into the shadows just around the corner, the most obvious
place there was.
Come on, come on . . .
Since they'd left the house, he'd finally started to
feel like things were going in his favor. He'd remem-
bered the underground room near the entrance to the
labs, and was almost certain that the wolf medal
would be there. And the tunnels were clear. He had
expected the 121s to be out, but apparently no one
had messed with the passage mechanisms since the
accident. They'd split up to search for the lever that
worked the passages and it had been in plain sight,
propped up next to the very mechanism that it
controlled.
Everything would have been perfect, except god-
damned Enrico Marini had wandered along, happen-
ing across a very important paper that Wesker had
accidentally dropped - his orders, straight from the
head of White Umbrella. And then to complicate
matters, Jill had blundered into the tunnels before
Wesker could finish taking care of the problem.
Wesker sighed inwardly. If it wasn't one thing, it
was another. In truth, this whole aifair had been a
massive headache from the beginning. At least the
underground security hadn't been activated - though
he'd had no way of knowing that until they'd reached
the tunnels, and having dragged Barry along as insur-
ance, he now had to deal with the consequences. If the
money wasn't so good.
He grinned. Who was he kidding? The money was
great.
After what felt like years, Barry huffed into the dark
room, blindly waving his revolver around. Wesker
tensed, waiting for him to walk past the generator's
alcove. This part could be tricky - Barry and Enrico
had been close.
As Barry stormed past the small chamber, Wesker
stepped out behind him and jammed the muzzle of
his Beretta into Barry's lower back, hard. At the same
time, he started talking, low and fast.
"I know you want to kill me, Barry, but I want you
to think about what you're doing. I die, your family
dies. And right now, it looks like Jill may have to die,
too, but you can stop it. You can put a stop to all the
killing."
Barry had stopped moving as soon as the gun
touched him, but Wesker could hear the barely con-
tained rage in his voice, the pure, driving hatred.
"You killed Enrico," he snarled.
Wesker pushed the gun deeper into his back. "Yes. But I didn't want to. Enrico found some information he shouldn't have, he knew too much. And if he'd told
Jill what he knew about Umbrella, I'd have had to kill
her, too."
"You're going to kill her anyway. You're going to
kill all of us."
Wesker sighed, allowing a pleading note to creep
into his voice. "That's not true! Don't you get it – - I just want to get to the laboratory and get rid of the
evidence before anyone finds it! Once that material is
destroyed, there's no reason for anyone else to get
hurt. We can all just . . . walk away."
Barry was silent, and Wesker could tell that he
wanted to believe him, wanted desperately to believe
that things could be that simple. Wesker let him waver
for a moment before pressing on.
