on a starless night.
Claire turned and pushed Sherry toward the dark-
ness of the crawl space, her heart hammering, her
body suddenly slick with sweat.
"Go! Go, I'm right behind you!"
Sherry disappeared into the curving black, darting
out of sight like a frightened mouse, and Claire didn't
look back, was too scared shitless to look back as she
followed Sherry into the hole, their relentless stalker
surely climbing through the shattered elevator to
continue his determined and unfathomable hunt.
Ada had heard pieces of Annette's screaming rant
from the shadows of the catwalk hub, where the three
metal spans joined. She'd forced herself not to rush to
Leon's aid, promising herself that if she heard shots,
she'd reconsider...
... but then the laboratory facility had been vio-
lently shaken, and the bland voice of the recording
started its loop.
Shit!
Ada staggered to her feet, furious at the woman
scientist, a part of her aching for Leon, knowing what
this meant. Annette had triggered the fail-safe, which
meant they probably had less than ten minutes to get
the hell out of Dodge...
... and Leon doesn't know the way.
No, not important. If she was going to collect the
sample, which Annette surely had on her, she needed
to do it now. Leon wasn't her problem, he'd never
been her problem, and she couldn't quit now, not
after the hell she'd been through to get Trent's pre-
cious virus.
Ada took a single step away from the main fuse
panel that connected the three catwalks and heard
the pounding footsteps coming toward her, footsteps
too heavy to be Annette's. She slid back into the
shadows and around to the span that led west, press-
ing herself against the hub's frame.
A second later, Leon went running past, probably
back to where he thought she'd be waiting for him.
Ada took a deep breath, blowing it out as she swept
Leon from her mind, and hurried across the southern
bridge to find Annette.
Ada was gone.
"...has been activated. This auto-destruct
sequence..."
"Shut up, shut up..." Leon hissed, standing help- lessly in the middle of the room, his stomach knotted,
his hands balled into fists.
When she'd heard the alarm, she must have pan-
icked and run. She was probably stumbling through
the giant facility, lost and dazed, maybe looking for
him as that infernally calm voice repeated, as the
sirens blared and rang.
The transport lift!
Leon turned and ran back through the door and
saw that it was gone, a large empty hole a few feet
deep where it had been. He'd been too intent on
getting to Ada, he hadn't even noticed that it wasn't
there anymore...
... we have to find that tunnel, we have to! Without
the lift, we're trapped here!
With a silent howl of frustration, Leon turned and
ran back toward the catwalks, praying that he would
find her before it was too late.
The crawl space ended abruptly, stopping over at
least a seven-foot drop to an empty tunnel. Her ears
ringing, her mouth dry as dust, Sherry grabbed the
edges of the square hole, closed her eyes, and jumped.
She swung out over the hall and let go as soon as she
was straight up and down, landing crooked and falling
as her right leg crumpled. It hurt, but she hardly felt
it, scrambling on hands and knees to get out of the
way, staring up at the hole...
... and there was Claire, her head coming out, her
wide, worried eyes taking in that she was okay, that
the hall was empty and safe ... except that there
were bells ringing and a woman on an intercom was
talking, and Mr. X was coming.
Claire stretched her arm down as far as she could
with the gun. "Sherry, I need you to hold this, I can't turn around."
Sherry stood and reached up, grabbing the barrel,
amazed at how heavy the gun was as Claire let go.
"Don't point it at anything," Claire breathed, and then she actually dove out of the hole, curling her
body and landing on her shoulder, her head tucked in
tight. She did a half-somersault and then her legs
banged into the concrete wall.
Before Sherry could even ask if she was all right,
Claire was on her feet, taking the gun and pointing to
the door at the end of the hall.
"Run!" she said, and started to run herself, one hand pushing on Sherry's back as they sprinted for
the door, as the intercom voice told them to get out,
told them that a self-destruct sequence had been
activated...
... and behind them, a sound of crashing metal tore
through the blaring noise of the sirens, and Sherry ran
faster, terrified.
TWENTY-EIGHT
ANNETTE BIRKIN CRAWLED OUT FROM BE-
neath the crushing weight of the cold metal, still
holding the gun, the G-Virus gone. As she opened her
mouth to scream her fury, to rail to the Gods at the
injustice of her terrible plight, blood dribbled out
across her lips in a thick streamer of clotted drool
mine mine mine -
Somehow, she made it to her feet.
Ada told herself that she didn't deserve Leon Ken-
nedy's good opinion anyway. She'd never deserved it.
Forgive me . . .
As he ran back across the catwalk from the trans-
port bay area and swung west, running blind with fear
for her, she stepped out of the hub's shadows and
pointed the Beretta at his back.
"Leon!"
He spun around, and Ada felt her throat lock at the
relief that spread across his face and struggled not
to feel anything more as the joy turned sour, his grin
fading.
Oh, Jesus, forgive me!
"I've been waiting for you," she said, and felt no pride at how smooth and steady her voice sounded.
How very cold.
The alarms blared, the mechanical voice almost as
icy as hers, telling them that the fail-safe couldn't be
shut down. She didn't have time to let him get used to
the idea, that she was as much a monster as the
Birkin-thing or one of the soulless zombies.
"The G-Virus," she said. "Give it to me."
Leon didn't move. "She was telling the truth," he said, no anger but more pain than Ada wanted to
hear. "You work for Umbrella."
Ada shook her head. "No. Who I work for is no concern of yours. I ... I ..."
For the first time in years, since she'd been a very
young girl, Ada felt the sting of tears and suddenly
she hated him for that, for making her hate herself.
"I tried!" she wailed, her composure blown by the fierce torrent of anger that coursed through her. "I tried to leave you, back in the factory! And you had to
take it from Birkin, didn't you, you couldn't just leave
it alone!"
She saw pity on his face, and felt the fury pass,
swept away on a wave of sorrow for what she'd lost,
with him; for the part of herself she'd lost a long, long
time ago.
She wanted to tell him about Trent. About the
missions in Europe and Japan, about how she'd
become what she was, about every event in her
miserable, successful life that had brought her to this
place - holding a weapon on a man who'd saved her.
A man she might have cared about, in a different time
and place.
The clock was ticking.
"Hand it over," she said. "Don't make me kill
you."
Leon stared into her eyes, and said, simply, "No." A second gone, then another.
Ada lowered the Beretta.
Leon steeled himself for the shot, for the bullet
from Ada's gun that would kill him...
... and she slowly lowered the weapon, her shoul-
ders sagging, a tear running down one porcelain
cheek.
Leon blew out his held breath, feeling too many
things, a jumble of sadness and betrayal - and pity,
for the tortured struggle in her beautiful dark gaze
and a shot rang out from the shadows behind
her. Ada's eyes went wide, her mouth falling open as
she pitched forward, the gun hitting the floor, her
body hitting the rail and flipping over.
"Ada, no!"
He ran and dove, and somehow she caught the rail
as he grabbed her wrist, her body dangling over the
bottomless dark, blood spouting from her hanging,
shattered shoulder.
"Ada, hold on!"
* * *
"Mine," Annette whispered.
She raised the handgun again, intending to shoot
the other, to take back what was hers, to make them
all pay...
... and the gun was too heavy, it was falling, and she
was falling with it. Together, they fell to the dark
metal, the dark, the dark spinning up into her mind and finally taking her pain away.
William...
It was her very last thought before she went to sleep.
The door opened into a room filled with screaming
machines, the howls and hisses of the humming,
rattling giants drowning out the shrill call of the alarm
warning.
Claire ran, pulling and pushing Sherry along, look-
ing desperately for a way out, knowing that the
monster was close.
What does he want, why us?
There, a platform in the corner some six feet off the
floor, a stack of crates pushed to one side just be-
neath it.
"This way!" Claire screamed, and they ran, past the rows of shuddering metal consoles, heat pouring from
the machines as Claire pushed Sherry up and then
climbed after her.
Crash!
She turned, saw that the massive creature was
ripping through the door across the room, striding
into the screaming heat and searching, searching...
At the end of the platform, a double metal hatch.
They dashed for it, Claire not thinking of anything
but how to get away, how to destroy a thing that had
survived all that it had...
... the door was unlocked, and they ran onto anoth-
er platform; the heat in the shadowy chamber was
searing, terrible...
... and a dead end. Claire saw that before they'd
taken a half-dozen running strides into the massive
room. They were on the overseer's platform in a
foundry, the boiling heat rising up from the heavy
smelting vats below.
She had twelve bullets, split between two guns.
Claire stumbled to the edge of the platform, Sherry
next to her, the electric orange of the molten metal
bathing them in its fevered glow. Hot enough to burn
anything...
How? How do I make him jump?
"Sherry, go over there!"
She pointed to the farthest corner of the platform,
and Sherry shook her head, her small face trembling
with fear.
"Do it! Now!" Claire shouted, and with a cry of terror, Sherry ran, her locket banging against the open
flaps of the denim vest -
- not a locket -
- and Sherry screamed, and Claire turned, and
Mr. X was coming.
He walked into the chamber, as stiff and huge and
impossible as when she'd first seen him, the eerie
orange light turning him into even more of a night-
mare. Claire stood her ground, jamming Irons's gun
into her shorts, the half-formed plan running through
her frightened mind. It probably wouldn't work but
she had to try -
- he reaches for me, I jump over the railing, I grab
on, he falls -
Mr. X turned his blank gaze toward her as he took
his floor-shaking, measured steps, the black bullet
holes in his face and throat just pockets of shadow in
the smooth, terrible pumpkin light...
... and he turned toward Sherry, and raised his fists,
and started for her.
"Hey! Hey, I'm here!" Claire screamed, and he didn't hear her, didn't see her, his entire monstrous
being focused on the cowering, sobbing girl huddled
against the far wall, clutching her locket...
... and Claire knew what he wanted. The half
remembered phrases from both Sherry and Annette
came together in a flash of awareness, forming the
answer.
G-Virus, rip her apart, good luck charm.
Not a locket.
"Sherry, he wants the necklace! Throw it to me!"
If she was wrong, they were both dead. Mr. X
closed in on the girl, blocking her from Claire's
view...
... and the pendant, the G-Virus pendant that An-
nette Birkin had inflicted on her young daughter came
flying through the heated dark, hitting the floor in
front of Claire's feet.
Mr. X reeled around, following the path of the
thrown pendant with his black eyes, forgetting Sherry
the second the necklace left her grasp. It was true.
Good girl!
Claire scooped it up, waving it at the monster,
feeling a rush of incredible anger and malicious glee
as the bloated giant started toward her with unwaver-
ing intent, fists raising again, his lifeless features fixed
on the glittering pendant.
"You want this?" Claire taunted, the words spilling out of the fury, for the wasted bullets, for the fear that
she and Sherry had suffered. "Yeah? Then come and get it, you miserable, mindless freak!"
The monster was less than five feet away when
Claire turned and threw it into the bubbling, burning
hot pool, the necklace disappearing into the melted
iron...
... and the superman creature that had terrorized them throughout the endless night walked straight
into the rail, the metal bars snapping in his all-
powerful wake...
... and plunged silently into the giant vat, a great
wave of sizzling metal sloshing over the blackened
sides, spontaneous eruptions of flame dancing up
from the dark shape of his body as he disappeared
beneath the surface of the molten lake.
Triumph, sweet and wonderful - and then the cool
voice of the recording changed suddenly, wiping away
the joy of seeing Mr. X take a lava bath.
Over the shrill blasts of the mechanical sirens.
"There are five minutes to reach minimum safe
distance. All remaining personnel should evacuate
immediately. Please report to the bottom platform.
Repeat, please report to the bottom platform. Re-
peat..."
Sherry was at her side, and Claire grabbed her
hand, and they ran.
The pain was incredible, and Ada closed her eyes,
wondering if she would die from it.
"Ada, hang on! Just hang on, I'll pull you up!"
Through the throbbing, pounding sirens that as-
saulted her ears, Ada heard the countdown for the
fail-safe start to run. Five minutes.
He tries to save me, we both die.
Leon's grip was strong, the determination in his
panicked, pleading voice almost as strong as her own
will. Almost, but not quite.
Ada turned her face up to his, saw that in spite of it
all, he still wanted her to survive, he wanted to help
her up and carry her away to the safety of escape.
Not this time. Not for me. . .
Her life had been about selfishness, about ego and
greed. She'd seen a lot of good people die, and
somewhere along the way, she'd lost the ability to
care - telling herself that even the effort was a waste
of time and a sign of weakness.
And I was wrong, I was selfish and wrong and now
it's too late.
Not too late. Whatever waited beneath her, the
