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.
"I 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 jerked, 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.
NINETEEN
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, Mr. X and the inside-out men?
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
