Carlos picked a slightly raised lump on top of the
giant, pulsing creature and opened fire, the rounds
splashing into the fleshy surface like pebbles into a
stream, tat tat tat -
- and lightning fast, one of the tentacles at the front
of the body lashed out, slapping Carlos's legs hard
enough to knock him down.
Carlos scrambled backwards through the pain in his
side, awed by its incredible speed and not a little afraid.
The bulk of it moved slowly, but its reflexes were in-
sanely fast, and it had reached across three meters of
open space to knock him down, seemingly without
strain.
"Puta madre," he breathed, the worst curse he could think of as he rolled to his feet and backed away. It was
already to the corner of the metal wall, ten meters or
less from the cannon where Jill was wildly slapping at
switches. He'd distracted it about as effectively as a fly
distracted an airplane. How much time do we have left before daybreak?
Suddenly, it howled again, a chorus of sound, each
small, leaking slit on its body gaping open, a thousand
mouths screaming, creating a trumpeting, deafening
roar.
It wasn't going to stop. Carlos backed further away
and opened fire again, a waste of bullets, but there was
nothing else he could do...
... and then he heard the powerful, rising hum of a
mighty turbine spinning fast and faster, and Jill was
screaming for him to move, and Carlos moved.
She hadn't been able to find the power main, no but-
tons or cords to connect, and she didn't know enough
about machines to figure it out. She'd seen Carlos fall
and her heart had stopped, but she'd forced herself to
keep trying, knowing it was all they had.
After a second frantic, desperate search she'd found
the power switches on its base, and the machine had
thrummed to beautiful, wonderful life.
"Move!" Jill shouted, pushing the levers that slowly and precisely raised the cannon, its movements spelled
out digitally on a small screen next to the base. She
could feel the energy building, the air around her heat-
ing up, and as Carlos got out of the way and the Neme-
sis-entity slithered out into the open, she found herself
positively thrilled, almost overcome with an intense
and violent sense of self-satisfaction.
It had killed Brad Vickers and tracked her merci-
lessly through the city. It had murdered the rescue team
and stranded them in Raccoon, it had infected her with
disease, it had terrorized her and wounded Carlos - and
that it had been programmed to do these things didn't
matter; she hated it with everything inside of her, de-
spised it more than anything she'd ever despised.
The mutated, aberrant thing inched forward on a
wave of slime as the cannon's hum reached an explo-
sive crescendo, the sound drowning out everything.
Jill's words went unheard, even by her.
"You want S.T.A.R.S., I'll give you S.T.A.R.S., you
piece of shit," she said, and slammed her hand down on the activation switch.
TWENTY-NINE
A BRILLIANT LIGHT, WHITE BUT SHADED
with electrically searing orange and blue, burst from
the end of the laser cannon in a beam of concentrated
fury. Arcs of heat and light stormed over the body of
the cannon like miniature bolts of lightning, and the
laser found the once-Nemesis's writhing, pulsating
body and began to eat.
The creature that had once been the pride of Um-
brella's development section whined and thrashed,
flailing its multiple limbs in a frenzy of agonized
confusion. The tight beam of light bored into its
flesh, as-relentless as it had proved, melting layers of
tissue and soldering harder materials - bone and car-
tilage and pliable metal - into fused and useless
lumps.
The creature began to smolder, then smoke, and
as the brain stem inside of it withered and cooked,
the Nemesis ceased to exist, its program wiped, its
improbable heart finally bursting silently, deep in-
side.
A few seconds later, the cannon overheated and shut
itself down.
THIRTY
THE HELICOPTER LIFTED UP AND AWAY, A
little jerky at first, but Carlos quickly found his bal-
ance. The first streaks of real light were swelling into the eastern sky as the doomed city fell behind them. It
seemed so strange to finally be on their way, after
days of wanting it so badly, of working toward noth-
ing else.
"Nicholai's dead," Jill said, her voice cool and clear over the headset. It was the first thing she'd said since
they'd taken off. "The Nemesis got him."
"No great loss," Carlos replied and meant it.
They fell into silence again, Carlos content to just fly
for the moment, give himself a chance to be still. He
was dog-tired and wanted only to get as far away from
Raccoon as possible before the missiles hit.
After a moment, Jill reached across and placed her
hand over his, and that was okay, too.
Jill held Carlos's hand as the sun inched slowly up
over the horizon, turning the sky magnificent shades of
pink and gray and lemon yellow. It was lovely, and Jill
found that, as hard as she tried, she couldn't feel sorry
that Raccoon was about to be dusted. It had been her
home for a while, but it had become pain and death for
thousands of people, and she thought that blasting it to
hell and gone was probably the best thing that could
happen to it.
Neither of them spoke as the sun continued to rise,
as the miles flew beneath them, forests and farms and
empty roads appearing fresh and bright in the gently
warming light.
When the sky flashed white and the sound wave hit
them a moment later, Jill didn't look back.
EPILOGUE
TRENT HAD HIS HANDS FULL FOR MOST OF
the day, listening in on the spindoc meetings, arrang-
ing for media sympathy with a few of their bought
networks, and explaining the difference between
HARMs - the air to surface missiles that the army had
used on Raccoon - and SRAMs to the three heads of
White Umbrella. Jackson, in particular, was unhappy
that the larger tactical missiles hadn't been used; he
didn't seem to understand that a deliberate nuclear in-
cident within the United States had to be kept as small
and contained as possible. Ironic, that a man with so
much wealth and power could be so oblivious to the
reality he had helped create.
Trent finally had a few moments to himself in the
early evening, after a final review of the Watchdog re-
ports. He took a cup of coffee out onto the balcony of
the rooms he used when he was at the DC offices. The
brisk twilight was refreshing after a day of recycled air
and fluorescent lights.
From twenty stories up, the city below seemed un-
real, sounds distant and features blurred. Gazing out
at nothing in particular, Trent sipped his coffee and
thought about all he'd witnessed in the past few days
from the shielded privacy of his home. Umbrella's
few dozen stationary remotes in Raccoon had had
nothing on the satellite pirate that piped information
to his private screening room; he'd been able to follow
several dramas that had unfolded in the last hours of
the city.
There had been the rookie policeman, Kennedy, and
Chris Redfield's sister - the two of them had barely es-
caped the lab explosion, managing to save Sherry
Birkin, the young daughter of one of Umbrella's top re-
search scientists, of all people. Trent hadn't had contact
with any of them, but he knew that Leon Kennedy and
Claire Redfield had become part of the fight. They
were young, determined, and filled with a hatred for
Umbrella; he couldn't have asked for better.
Trent's high hopes for Carlos Oliveira had been well
met, and that he had joined forces with Jill Valen-
tine ... Trent had been utterly transfixed by their es-
cape, pleased that two of his unwitting soldiers had
worked so well together, surviving in spite of Jill's in-
fection, the lunatic Russian, and the S.T.A.R.S. seeker.
Use of the experimental Tyrant-like units was still in
question by many of the White Umbrella researchers;
for as deadly efficient as they usually were, they were
also very expensive, and Trent knew that the debates
would go on, fueled by the loss of two units in the de-
struction of the city.
Ada Wong, though...
Trent sighed, wishing that she had survived. The tall,
beautiful, Asian-American agent he had sent in had
been as brilliant as she was competent. He hadn't actu-
ally seen her die, but the chances that she had escaped
both the lab explosion and the complete obliteration of
Raccoon were slim to none. Unfortunate, to say the
least.
Overall, though, Trent was satisfied with how things
were progressing. As far as he could tell, no one in the
company had the slightest inkling of who he really was
or what he was doing. The three most powerful men in
Umbrella relied on him more and more every day, com-
pletely unaware of his agenda - to destroy the organi-
zation, from without and within, to devastate its
leaders' lives and deliver them to justice; to organize an
elite army of men and women committed to Umbrella's
downfall, and to guide them as much as he was able in
their quest.
If his methods were complicated, the reason was simple: to avenge the death of his parents, both scien-
tists, murdered when he was a child so that Umbrella
could profit from their research.
Trent smiled to himself, taking another sip from his
mug. It sounded so melodramatic, so grandiose. It had
been almost thirty years since his parents had been
burned alive in the alleged laboratory accident. He'd
left the pain behind long ago - his resolve, however,
had never faltered. He'd changed his name, his back-
ground, given up any hope of ever having a normal
Life and regretted nothing, even now that he shared
responsibility for the deaths of so many.
It was getting dark. Far below, streetlights were
flickering on, sending up a soft glow that would radiate
out into the night sky like a halo above the city. In its
own way, it was quite beautiful.
Trent finished his coffee and absently traced the Um-
brella logo on the side of the cup with his fingers,
thinking about darkness and light, good and evil, and
the shades of gray that existed in between everything.
He needed to be very careful, and not just to avoid
being discovered; it was those shades of gray that wor-
ried him.
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