was making her want to vomit. She turned a few pages,
found another entry about Alfred and his sister, scanned
over something about a private home and went back,
frowning.
Alfred attended one of my live autopsies today,
and told me afterward that Alexia has asked after
me, that she wants to know if I have everything I
need. Alfred worships Alexia, will let no one near her,
I haven't asked to meet her yet, and have no plans to
do so; Alfred wants their private home to remain pri-
vate, and to keep her all to himself. It's behind the
common mansion, he told me, most people don't
even know it exists. Alfred tells me things that no one
else knows. I think he appreciates having an ac- quaintance with common interests.
He said that Rockfort has many places that require
unusual keys - much like the eye he gave me - some
new, some very old. Edward Ashford, Alfred's grand-
father, was apparently obsessed with secrecy, an ob-
session shared by Umbrella's other founder, according
to Alfred. He and Alexia are the only people alive who
know all the hidden places at Rockfort, he said. Al-
fred had full sets of keys made for both of them when
he took over his father's position. I joked that it's good
to have a spare in case he ever locks himself out,
and he laughed. He said that Alexia would always let
him in.
I believe that twins often have a much deeper
bond than other sets of siblings - that in a figurative
sense, if you cut one, the other will bleed. I'd like very
much to test this theory in a more literal way, regard-
ing pain levels. I've found that filling a fresh wound
with cut glass and sewing it closed again is a...
Sickened, Claire tossed the book aside and wiped her
hands on her jeans, deciding that she had enough infor-
mation to go on. She hoped quite sincerely that the
corpse upstairs was Dr. Stoker's, that his black heart had
failed him and it was the thought of going to hell that had
frozen his face into a mask of terror - and she abruptly
realized that she'd had more than enough of his atmos-
phere, that if she had to be in the infirmary for one more
minute, she really was going to throw up. She turned and
walked quickly to the door, was full on running by the
time she reached the stairs. She took them two at a time,
and sprinted through the upstairs room, not looking at the
body, not thinking about anything but the need to get out.
When she hit the outside path that led back to the
guillotine door, she collapsed against one wall and
breathed in huge lungfuls of air, concentrating on keep-
ing her gorge down. It took a couple of minutes before
she was out of the danger zone.
When she felt ready, Claire plugged a fresh clip in her
semi and started back toward the training facility. She
realized that she'd lost the second weapon Steve gave
her somewhere between the torture chamber and the
front door, but there was nothing on Earth that would
persuade her to step foot back inside. She was going to
get Steve, and they would find those goddamn keys, and
then they were getting the fuck away from the asylum
that Umbrella had created at Rockfort.
Steve cried for a while, and rocked himself back and
forth for a while, dully aware that he'd just done a very
Big Thing -- as far as lifetime experiences went, there
was the small shit and then big and then capital B Big. There were some things that just changed people forever,
and this was one of them. He'd had to kill his own father.
Both his parents, good people who meant no harm, were
dead. That meant there was no one in the world who
loved him now, and it was that thought that kept repeat-
ing itself, making him cry and rock back and forth.
It was thinking about the Lugers that finally snapped
him out of the private emotional hell he was in, that made
him remember where he was and what was happening.
He still felt entirely terrible, aching inside and out, but he
started to tune back in to his environment, wishing that
Claire was with him, wishing for a glass of water.
The Lugers. Steve rubbed at his swollen eyes and
then pulled both of them from under his belt, staring
down at them. It was stupid, unimportant, but some-
where in the back of his mind, he'd finally connected
that when he'd taken the matched handguns off the wall,
that was when he'd been locked in and the heat had
gone on. It had been a trap ... and as far as he could
figure, the only purpose of a trap like that was to keep
someone from taking the weapons.
Which means maybe they're useful for something be-
sides shooting. Yeah, they were gilded and cool-looking and probably expensive, but the Ashfords obviously
weren't hurting for money ... and if the guns had some
kind of sentimental value, why were they being used as
part of a trap?
He decided that he wanted to go back and take a
closer look at where they'd been hanging, see if putting
them back did anything. It was a two-minute walk back
to the mansion, tops, he could be there and back in five;
Claire would wait for him if she got back first.
And if I stay here, I'll just keep crying. He wanted, needed something to do.
Steve stood up, feeling shaky and kind of hollow as
he brushed dirt off his pants, unable to avoid looking
over at where his father had died. He felt a rush of relief
when he saw that Claire had covered him up with a
piece of tarp. She was a great girl ... though for some
reason, he suddenly felt kind of weird about her, about
telling her all that stuff. He wasn't sure how he felt.
He stepped outside, and was vaguely surprised to see
that he wasn't in the front yard of the training facility.
He was also vaguely surprised that in the small, high-
walled square he had walked into was what appeared to
be a WWII Sherman tank. Giant, mud-crusted treads,
revolving turret with huge gun, the whole deal.
He might have been interested earlier, or at least more
than just a little surprised - there was no reason at all for
there to be a tank at the Rockfort facility - but now all
he wanted to do was check out the Luger trap, see if he could at least contribute something toward getting them
off the island. He felt kind of bad that Claire had been
stuck with questioning the wounded Umbrella guy by
herself, since it was his idea and all.
On the other side of the tank was a door that did open
into the training yard. At least his sense of direction
wasn't totally blown. It seemed darker than it had ear-
lier; Steve looked up and saw that the sky had gone
cloudy again, blocking the moon and stars. He was
about halfway across the yard when he heard thunder,
loud enough that the very ground seemed to quake a lit-
tle beneath his feet. By the time he reached the other
side, it had started to rain again.
Steve stepped up the pace, hanging a right at the exit
and jogging for the mansion. The rain was heavy and
cold, but he welcomed it, opening his mouth and turning
his face to the sky, letting it wash over him. He was
soaked in just a few seconds.
"Steve!"
Claire.
He felt his stomach knot up a little, turning to watch
her approach. She caught up to him outside the door to
the mansion's grounds, wearing a concerned expression.
"Are you all right?" she asked, studying him uncer- tainly, blinking rain out of her eyes.
Steve wanted to tell her that he was aces, that he'd
shaken off the worst of it and was ready to get back to
the zombie smackdown, but when he opened his mouth,
none of that came out.
"I don't know. I think so," he said truthfully. He man- aged a half smile, not wanting her to worry too much but
not wanting to talk about it, either.
She seemed to understand, swiftly changing the topic.
"I found out that the Ashford twins have a private house
hidden behind the mansion," she said. "And I'm not a hundred percent sure, but the keys we're looking for
might be there. I think there's a good chance."
"You found all that out from the, uh, Rodrigo?"
Steve asked doubtfully. It was hard to imagine
that an Umbrella employee would give that up to the
enemy.
Claire hesitated, then nodded. "In a roundabout way," she said, and he suddenly had the impression that there
was something she didn't want to talk about. He didn't
push it, just waited.
"The problem is getting to the house," she continued. "I'm sure it's locked up tight. I was thinking we might
poke around the mansion a little more, see if we can find
a map or a passage..."
She pushed her dripping bangs out of her eyes, smil-
ing. "... and, you know, get out of the rain before we get wet."
Steve agreed. They went through the entrance to the
manicured grounds, stepping over a few corpses along
the way. He filled her in on his idea about the Lugers,
which she thought they should definitely pursue - al-
though she also pointed out that with the Ashford family
running the island, Umbrella's cute little puzzles didn't
necessarily need to be logical.
They stopped at the front door to do what they could
about their clothes, which turned out to be not much.
Both of them were drenched, though they did their best
to squeeze out the excess. Fortunately for both of them,
their feet had stayed dry; wet clothes were a pain in the
ass, but trying to get around in squelching boots seri-
ously sucked the root.
Weapons up, Steve pushed the door open. Shivering,
they stepped inside...
... and heard a door close, upstairs and to the right.
"Alfred," Steve said, keeping his voice low, "betcha money. What say we put a few holes in his sorry ass?"
He started for the stairs, the question rhetorical. That
loony craphound needed to be dead, for more reasons
than Steve could count.
Claire caught up to him, put a hand on his shoulder.
"Listen, some of the stuff I found back at the
prison ... he's not just crazy, he's seriously deranged.
Like serial killer deranged."
"Yeah, I got that," Steve said. "All the more reason to take him out ASAP."
"Just ... let's just be careful, okay?"
Claire seemed worried, and Steve felt protective all of
a sudden, big time.
Oh, yeah, he's going down, he thought grimly, but nodded for Claire's sake. "You got it."
They moved quickly up the stairs, stopping outside
the door they'd heard close. Steve stepped ahead of
Claire, who cocked an eyebrow but said nothing.
"On three," he whispered, turning the knob very slowly, relieved that it was unlocked. "One-two-three!" He shouldered the door, hard, bursting into the room
and sweeping with the machine pistol, ready to shoot
the first thing that moved, but nothing did. The room, a
softly lit office lined with bookshelves, was empty.
Claire had gone in and turned left, past a couch and cof-
fee table on the north wall. Disappointed, Steve stepped
after her, expecting another door to another hall, so sick of
the stupid mazes all over the place that he could just shit...
He stopped and stared, exactly what Claire was
doing. Perhaps ten feet away was a wall, a dead end
with two empty spaces set in a plaque at about chest
level, indentations shaped like Lugers.
Steve felt a flush of adrenaline, of victory. He had no
rational reason to believe that they'd just found the way
to the Ashford's private residence, but he believed they
had, anyway. So, it seemed, had Claire.
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