taken Steve and his father to Rockfort.
"I thought he was killed in the air strike," Steve said, wiping at his eyes. "I wanted to feel bad about it, I did, but I just kept thinking about Mom, about how she
looked ... but I didn't want him to die, I didn't, I ... I
loved him, too."
Saying it out loud made him start crying again.
Claire's arm was around him but he barely felt it, so sad
that he thought he might die. He knew he had to get up,
he had to find the keys and go with Claire and fly the
plane, but none of that seemed important anymore.
Claire had been mostly quiet, only listening and hold-
ing him, but she stood up now and told him to stay where
he was, that she'd be back soon and then they could
leave. That was okay, it was good, he wanted to be alone.
And he was more exhausted than he'd ever been in his
life, so tired and heavy that he didn't want to move.
Claire went away, and Steve decided that he should
go looking for the proof keys soon, very soon, as soon
as he stopped shaking.
SEVEN
IN THE COOL DARKNESS, RODRIGO HAD BEEN
resting uneasily. Now he heard a noise out in the corri-
dor, and forced himself to open his eyes, to get ready.
He lifted his weapon, bracing his wrist on the desk when
he realized he hadn't the strength to hold it up.
I'll kill anyone who messes with me, he thought, more by habit than anything else, glad he had the gun even if he
was already a dead man. A zombie guard had fallen down the stairs and crawled into the cell room sometime
after the girl had left, but Rodrigo had killed it with a
boot to the head and taken its weapon, still holstered on
its broken hip.
He waited, wishing that he could go back to sleep,
trying to stay alert. The gun eased his mind, took away a
lot of his fear. He was going to die soon, it was in-
evitable ... but he didn't want to become one of them,
no matter what. Suicide was supposed to be a particu-
larly awful sin, but he also knew that if he couldn't man-
age to wipe out an approaching virus carrier, he'd eat a
bullet before he let it touch him. He was probably going
to hell, anyway.
Footsteps, and someone was walking into the room,
too fast. A zombie? His senses weren't working right, he
couldn't tell if things were speeding up or he was slow-
ing down, but he knew he had to shoot soon or he'd miss
his chance.
Suddenly, a light, small but penetrating - and there
she was, standing in front of him like some dream. The
Redfield girl, alive, holding a lighter up in the air. She
left it burning, set it on the desk like a tiny lantern.
"What're you doing here?" Rodrigo mumbled, but she was rummaging through a pack at her waist, not looking
at him. He let the heavy gun drop from his fingers, closing
his eyes for a second or a moment. When he opened them
again, she was reaching for his arm, a syringe in one hand.
"It's hemostatic medicine," she said, her hands and voice soft, the prick of the needle small and quick.
"Don't worry, you won't OD or anything, somebody
wrote dosage numbers on the back of the bottle. It says
it'll slow down any internal bleeding, so you should be
okay until help comes. I'll leave the lighter here ... my
brother gave it to me. It's good luck."
As she spoke, Rodrigo concentrated on waking up,
on overcoming the apathy that had taken him over.
What she was telling him didn't make sense, because
he'd let her go, she was gone. Why would she come
back to help him?
Because I let her go. The realization touched him, flooded him with feelings of shame and gratitude.
"I ... you're very kind," he whispered, wishing there was something he could do for her, something he could
say that would repay her for her compassion. He
searched his memories, rumors and facts about the is-
land, maybe she can escape...
"The guillotine," he said, blinking up at her, trying not to slur his words too badly. "Infirmary's behind it, key's in my pocket ... supposed to be secrets there. He
knows things, puzzle pieces ... you know where's the
guillotine?"
Claire nodded. "Yes. Thank you, Rodrigo, that helps me a lot. You rest now, okay?"
She reached out and stroked his hair back from his
forehead, a simple gesture, but so sweet, so nice, he
wanted to weep.
"Rest," she said again, and he closed his eyes, calmer, more at peace than he'd ever felt in his life. His last
thought before he drifted off was that if she could forgive
him after the things he'd done, show him such mercy as
if he deserved it, maybe he wouldn't go to hell, after all.
Rodrigo had been right about secrets. Claire stood at
the end of the hidden basement corridor, steeling herself
to open the unmarked door in front of her.
The infirmary itself was small and unpleasant, not at
all what she would have expected for an Umbrella
clinic - no medical equipment to be seen, nothing mod-
ern at all. There was only a single examination table in
the front room, the splintery wooden floor around it
stained with blood, a tray of medieval-looking tools
nearby. The adjoining room had been burned beyond
recognition; she couldn't tell what purpose it had
served, but it looked like a cross between a recovery
room and a crematorium. Smelled like one, too.
There was a tiny, cluttered office just off the first
room, a lone body sprawled in front of it, a man in a
stained lab coat who had died with a look of horror on his
narrow, ashen face. He didn't appear to have been in-
fected, and since there were no virus carriers in the room
and no obvious wounds, she guessed that he'd had a heart
attack, or something like it. The contorted expression on
his pinched features, bulging eyes and gaping, down-
turned mouth, suggested to her that he'd died of fright.
Claire carefully stepped over him, and found the first
secret in the small office almost by accident. Her boot
had nudged something when she walked in, a marble or
stone that had rolled across the floor - which had turned
out to be a most unusual key. It was a glass eye, one that
belonged in the grotesque plastic face of the office's
anatomical dummy, propped leering in the corner.
Considering what Steve had said, about no one com-
ing back from the infirmary, and considering what she
already knew about the kind of insanity that Umbrella
seemed to attract, Claire wasn't surprised to find a hid-
den passage behind the office wall. A worn set of stone
steps were revealed when she'd placed the eye back
where it belonged, which hadn't really surprised her, ei-
ther. It was a secret, a trick, and Umbrella was all about
secrets and tricks.
So open the door, already. Get it over with.
Right. She didn't have all day. She didn't want to
leave Steve alone for too long, either, she was worried about him. He'd had to kill his own father; she couldn't
imagine the kind of psychological damage that would
do to someone...
Claire shook her head, irritated with her own
dawdling. It didn't matter that she was in a barren,
frightening place where lots of people had apparently
died, where she could feel the pervasive atmosphere of
terror emanating from the cold walls, trying to wrap
around her like a burial shroud...
"Doesn't matter," she said, and opened the door. Immediately, three stumbling virus carriers started for
her, drawing her attention, keeping her from really seeing
the details of the large room they'd been trapped in. All
three were badly disfigured, missing limbs and long,
ragged strips of skin, their putrefying flesh flayed and raw.
They moved slowly, painfully dragging themselves to-
ward her, and she could see older scars on the exposed rot-
ting tissue. Even as she targeted the first, the knot of dread
in her stomach was expanding, making her feel sick.
It was over quickly, at least - but the terrible suspicion
that had been growing in her mind, that she'd been hoping
was false, was confirmed with a single good look around.
Oh, Jesus.
The room was strangely elegant, the muted lighting
coming from a hanging chandelier. The floor was tiled,
with a runner of finely woven carpet leading from the
door to a kind of sitting area on the other side of the
room. There was an overstuffed velvet chair and cherry
wood end table there, the chair facing out so that
someone sitting there would be able to see the entire
room ... which was worse than she could have imag-
ined, worse than the mad Chief Irons's dungeon, hidden
beneath the streets of Raccoon.
There were two custom-built water wells, one with a
pillory built into its rail, a steel cage suspended over the
other. Chains hung from the walls, some with well-used
manacles attached, some with leather collars, some with
hooks. There were a few elaborate devices that she didn't
look at too closely, things with gears and metal spikes.
Swallowing back bile, Claire focused on the sitting
area. The elegance of the furnishings and of the room it-
self made things worse somehow, adding a touch of
warped ego to the obvious psychosis of its creator. Like
it wasn't enough to enjoy torturing people, he -or she -
- wanted to observe it in luxury, like some mad aristocrat.
She saw a book on the end table and walked over to
retrieve it, keeping her gaze fixed straight ahead. Virus
zombies and monsters and useless death were all horri-
ble things, tragic or frightening or both - but the kind of
sickness represented by the chains and devices all
around her was appalling to her very soul, because it made her want to give up her faith in humanity.
The book was actually a journal, leather bound with
thick, high quality paper. The inner cover proclaimed
that it was the property of a Dr. Enoch Stoker, no title or
inscription otherwise.
"He knows things, puzzle pieces..."
Claire didn't want to touch the thing let alone read it,
but Rodrigo had seemed to think it might help. She flipped
through a few pages, saw that nothing was dated, and
started scanning the narrow, spidery writing for a familiar
word or name, something about puzzles, maybe ... there,
an entry that made several references to Alfred Ashford.
She took a deep breath and started at the top.
We finally talked today about the details of my
preferences and pleasures. Mr. Ashford wouldn't
share his own, but he was most encouraging to me,
as he's been since my arrival six weeks ago. He was
informed at the beginning that my needs are uncon-
ventional, but now he knows everything, even the
small things. I was uncomfortable at first, but Mr.
Ashford - Alfred, he insists I call him Alfred - proved to
be an eager audience. He said that he and his sister
both strongly approve of research in the boundaries
of experience. He told me that I should think of them
as kindred spirits, and that here, I am free.
It was strange, describing aloud my feelings, sen-
sations and thoughts that I've never shared. I told
him about how it all started, when I was still a boy.
About the animals I experimented with early on and
later, the other children. I didn't know then that I was
capable of killing, but I knew that the sight of blood
excited me, that causing pain filled an empty, lonely
space inside with profound feelings of power and
control.
I think he understands about the screaming, about
how important the screaming is to me and...
Enough. This wasn't what she was looking for, and it
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