Alexia knows, Alfred thought, certain that his beautiful sister was watching, too, that she understood what could
not be explained. In Claire's death, they would be as
close as two people could ever be; it was the wonder of
their relationship, the culmination of the Ashford legacy.
He couldn't contain himself another moment. As
Claire took another cautious step into the center of the
room, he first locked the door she'd come through, seal-
ing off her escape - and then pressed the button for the
second story shutter release.
Instantly, the narrow metal shutter not ten feet from
where she stood slid open and as Claire stumbled back-
ward, trying to distance herself from the unknown threat, a
fully matured Bandersnatch stepped out, ready to engage.
It was beautiful, the creature. Between seven and
eight feet tall, its face was that of a grinning skeleton, its
head set low and menacing. The disproportionately
huge upper body supported its primary weapon - the
right arm, as thick as one of its tree-trunk legs, longer
than half its full body length at rest, the hand span big
enough to cover an ordinary man's entire chest. Its left
arm was withered, tiny and misshapen, but a Bander-
snatch only needed the one.
Alfred had hoped for some exclamation from her, a
curse or a scream, but she was silent as she retreated to
what she believed to be a safe distance. She opened fire
almost immediately.
The Bandersnatch roared, a rough guttural scream,
and then performed its trick. Alfred had seen it a dozen
times, but never tired of watching.
The massive right arm snapped toward Claire, proba- bly fifteen feet away, the engineered muscles hyperex-
tending, the elastic tendons and ligaments stretching...
... and it slapped Claire to the ground with scarcely
any effort, the girl knocked sprawling before the Ban-
dersnatch's arm snapped back into place.
Yes, oh, yes!
Claire crabbed backward as fast as she could, stop-
ping only when her back hit the wall. Alfred zoomed in
to see that a fine sheen of sweat had broken out across
her face, but she still wore no expression beyond a kind
of intense watchfulness. She pulled herself to her feet
and sidestepped along the wall, moving fast, obviously
not wanting to be knocked off the balcony by the crea-
ture's next blow.
Alfred grinned, ignoring the disappointment that her
apparent lack of terror had brought about. She'd be out
of wall in another few seconds, backed into a corner...
... and then a series of blows, beating her to death
against the wall ... or a simple neck snap, a grasp of her head and a single, solid shake ... or will it toy with her, tossing her around like one of Alexia's ragdolls?
Alfred leaned in eagerly, changing the angle for one
of the cameras, watching as the doomed girl raised her
weapon, taking careful aim in spite of her hopeless posi-
tion...
... bam!
The Bandersnatch shrieked even louder than the gun-
shot, shaking its head wildly, dark fluids rushing from
its moving face. It sprayed the balcony walls with
ichorous liquid, blood and other things, trying desper-
ately to bring its arm up, to protect or comfort its wound.
It all happened so fast, so violently, it was like watching
a fountain geyser suddenly explode from a still lake.
The eyes. She went for its eyes.
Bam!
Claire shot again, and then again, and the Bander-
snatch cried out in fury and new pain, still trying to
grasp its own injured head as it stumbled around in a
weaving circle ... and then, to Alfred's shock, it col-
lapsed to the floor, its writhings becoming less and less
urgent, its scream becoming a hoarse, dying protest.
Stunned with disbelief, Alfred could finally see an
emotion on Claire's face - pity. She moved to stand over
the creature and shot once more, stilling it completely.
Then she turned and walked toward the stairs, as casu-
ally as if she was walking away from a ladies' luncheon.
No-no-no-no!
This was wrong, all wrong, but it wasn't over, not yet.
Furious, he stabbed at the other switch, releasing the
second creature from its enclosure, the shutter sliding
open behind a stack of storage containers on the elevator level.
You won't be so fortunate this time, he thought desper- ately, still barely able to credit what he'd just seen. Claire
had heard the second door open, but the stack of contain-
ers obscured her point of view, hiding the new menace.
She was stopped at the foot of the stairs, holding herself
very still, scanning for the exact source of the noise.
The second Bandersnatch stepped out of its closet
and casually reached up, grasping a large metal crate at
the top of a ten foot stack of them. It pulled itself up,
seemingly without effort - and without Claire noticing,
her attention too intently fixed on the shadowy corner
opposite the stairs.
The Bandersnatch reached down for her. Claire saw it
coming at the last instant, too late to get out of its way. The
creature wrapped its muscular fingers around her head and
lifted her up, studying her as a cat studied a mouse.
Or a rat, Alfred thought, some of his previous joy re- turning at the sight of the girl dropping her weapon and
struggling to free herself, grasping at the OK1's steel
grip with panicked hands -
- and Alfred's focus was broken at the sound of shat-
tering glass somewhere off screen, and someone was
shooting, the sudden flurry of noise and activity making
the Bandersnatch shriek, making it drop Claire.
What's...?
The window, Alfred answered himself, watching in horror as the young prisoner, Burnside, threw himself
into the camera shot, firing two handguns at once, blast-
ing at the startled creature - startled, then screaming in
agony as Claire scooped up her weapon and joined the
fray. The Bandersnatch tried to attack, its arm whipping
out toward the new assailant, but it was driven back by
the sheer number of rounds being pumped into its body,
finally slumping against a storage container. Dead.
Without consciously deciding to do it, Alfred reached
for the freight elevator controls, a part of him remember-
ing that there was at least one more OR1 below, as well as
a number of virus carriers. The two youths stumbled as the
floor beneath their feet began to go down, taking them to
the basement of the training facility. There were no work-
ing cameras there, but enjoying their deaths was no longer
Alfred's primary concern - not so long as they died.
Can't be, this can't be happening. The OR1s should have dispatched Claire and her meddlesome friend ef-
fortlessly, but they were alive and his pets had suffered
and died. He tried to convince himself that the two
would soon perish in the basement, which had been
locked down and isolated since the first viral leak, but
suddenly, nothing seemed certain anymore.
"Alexia," Alfred whispered, feeling the blood drain from his face, feeling his very being flush with shame.
He had to make her see that it wasn't his fault, that his
trap had worked perfectly, that the impossible had oc-
curred ... and he'd have to accept the subsequent cool-
ness in her gaze, the undertone of disappointment in her
sweet voice as she reassured him that she understood.
The only thing that surpassed his shame was a new-
found hatred for Claire Redfield, burning brighter than a
thousand burning stars. No sacrifice was too great to se-
cure her torment, hers and that of her shining knight.
Until both had offered penitence in flesh and blood,
Alfred would not rest. He swore it.
"Steve, other side," Claire said, the instant the freight elevator began to move. Steve nodded. Claire reloaded
and Steve clambered over two of the heavy crates, both
Lugers raised. As if by silent agreement, neither of them
spoke as the lift descended, both watching intently for
what came next.
He saved my life, Claire thought wonderingly, watch- ing grease-smeared wall tracks slide past, blood still
screaming through her veins from when she'd realized
she would die. And Steve Burnside, who she'd written
off as a well-intentioned but troubled, barely competent
blowhard, had kept that from happening.
Though he may only have delayed the inevitable...
She didn't know what Alfred had in mind now, but
she wasn't looking forward to meeting any more of his
"friends." Two skull-faced, rubber band-armed freaks
had been more than enough. She'd been incredibly
lucky to get off with a couple of bruises and a sore neck.
Claire had expected the elevator to drop them into
some sort of BOW holding area, but she was pleasantly
disappointed. The massive lift simply came to a stop.
There was only one exit that she could see, and although
she harbored no illusions about how safe things would
be on the other side of that door, it seemed they were out
of danger for the moment.
"Hey, Claire, check it out!"
Steve climbed back over the boxes, holding what
could only be some kind of a submachine gun, boxy,
dark and deadly-looking with an extended magazine.
"It was behind one of the crates," Steve said happily. He'd already stuck the gold Lugers in his belt. "Nine millimeter, just like the Lugers and the guard weapons.
Oh, by the way, here."
He reached into one of the outside pockets on his
camo pants and pulled out three clips for the M93R.
"I searched a couple of guards on my way back from the
dock. I like the Lugers better, and now that I've got
this..." He held up the new weapon, grinning, "I don't need the extra hardware. You can have the gun, too."
Claire gratefully accepted the clips and the weapon,
not sure how to thank him for what he'd done, deter-
mined to try, anyway.
"Steve ... if you hadn't shown up when you did..."
"Forget it," he said, shrugging. "We're even now."
"Well, thanks all the same," Claire said, smiling warmly.
He smiled back, and she saw a flicker of real interest
in his gaze, a sincerity there that was quite different than
his previous posturing. Not sure what to do about it, for
him or for herself, she moved the conversation along.
"I thought you were going to wait at the dock," she said.
"It wasn't really a dock," Steve said, and told her what had happened since they'd separated. The seaplane
was terrific news; having to deal with Umbrella's
bizarre key fetish yet again wasn't so terrific.
"...and when I couldn't find them, I thought I'd
wander over and see if you'd come across anything like
that," he finished, shrugging again, working hard to look nonchalant. "That's when I heard the shots. How 'bout you, anything interesting? Besides meeting up with a
couple of Umbrella's monsters, I mean."
"I'll say. Do you know anything about Alfred Ash-
ford?"
"Only that him and his sister are total fruitcakes,"
Steve said promptly. "And that the guards are - were scared of him. I could tell, the way they avoided talking
about him. He sent his own assistant to the infirmary, I
heard. There was some whacked-out doctor working
there, I guess, a lot of prisoners got taken to the infirmary
and never came back. Doesn't take a genius, you know?"
Claire nodded, fascinated in spite of herself. "What about the sister?"
"I never heard much about her, except she's some
kind of shut-in," Steve said. "No one even knows what she looks like. I think her name is Alexia ... Alexandra,
maybe, I don't remember. Why?"
She filled him in on her encounters with Alfred, fol-
lowed by a brief synopsis of where she'd been and what
she'd found. When she mentioned that she had the med-
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