didn't care. Rodrigo gritted his teeth and stumbled to his
feet, aware that the young Claire probably wouldn't last
ten minutes on her own, knowing that he meant to give
her the chance. It wasn't the least he could do; it was
simply the only thing left.
ONE
CLAIRE'S HEAD HURT.
She'd been half-dreaming, remembering things,
until the faraway sound of thunder crowded through the
dark, pulling her closer to wakefulness. She'd dreamed
about the insanity that had become her life over the
past few months, and even though an almost conscious
part of her knew it was reality, it still seemed too in-
credible to be true. Flashes of what had happened in
post-viral Raccoon City kept rising up, images of the
inhuman creature that had stalked her and the little girl
through the devastation, memories of the Birkin fam-
ily, of meeting Leon, of praying that Chris was all
right.
Thunder again, louder, and she realized that some-
thing was wrong but couldn't seem to wake up, to stop remembering. Chris. Her brother had gone underground
in Europe, and they had followed, and now she was cold
and her head hurt but she didn't know why.
What happened? She concentrated, but it would only come in pieces, pictures and thoughts from the weeks
since Raccoon City. She couldn't seem to control the
memories. It was like watching a movie in a dream, and
still, she couldn't wake up.
Images of Trent on the plane, and a desert, finding a
disk of codes that had ultimately proved useless to her
brother's cause. The long flight to London, the hop to
France -
- a telephone call, "Chris is here, he's fine." Barry
Burton's voice, deep and friendly. Laughing, the incred-
ible relief filling her up, feeling Leon's hand on her
shoulder.
It was a start, and it led her to the next clear recollec-
tion - a meeting had been set up, one of the surveillance
posts for the HQ Admin wing, on Umbrella grounds.
Leon and the others were waiting in the van, checking my watch, heart pounding with excitement, where is he,
where's Chris?
Claire didn't know she was screwed until the first bul-
lets ripped past, chasing her onto the spotlight-riddled
grounds, into a building -
- running through the corridors, deafened by the rat-
tle of automatic weapons and the helicopter outside,
running, bullets chipping by close enough to send sharp-
ened slivers of floor tile into the meat of her calves...
... and an explosion, armed soldiers writhing in the
blast's fury, and ... and I got caught.
They'd held her for over a week, trying everything
they could to make her talk. She'd talked, too, about
going fishing with Chris, political ideology, her favorite
bands ... When it came down to it, she didn't know
anything vital; she was looking for her brother, that was
all, and she somehow managed to convince them that
she didn't know anything important about Umbrella. It
probably helped that she was nineteen, and looked about
as deadly as a Girl Scout. What little she actually did
know, things about the Umbrella insider, Trent, or the
whereabouts of Sherry Birken, the scientist's daughter,
she buried deep and left there.
When they'd realized she was useless as an informant,
she'd been taken away. Cuffed, scared, two private
planes and a helicopter later, the island. She didn't even
see it, they'd put a hood over her face, the stifling black-
ness only adding to her fear. Rockfort Island, wasn't that
what the pilot called it? It was a long way from Paris, but
that was the extent of her knowledge. Thunder, there
was a sound of thunder. She remembered being pushed through a muddy prison cemetery in the gray morning,
catching a glimpse through her stifling hood of the
graves, marked with elaborate headstones. Down some
stairs, welcome to your new home and BOOM.
The ground was shaking, rumbling. Claire opened her
eyes just in time to see the one overhead light go out, the
thick metal bars of her cell suddenly imprinted in nega-
tive and floating off to her left in the pitch dark. She lay
on her side on a clammy, dirty floor.
Not good, nope, you better get up. Steeling herself against the pounding of her skull she crawled to her
knees, her muscles stiff and sore. The blackness of the
cold, dank room was very still, except for the sound of
water dripping, a slow and lonely sound; it appeared she
was alone.
Not for long. Oh, man, I'm in it deep now. Umbrella had her, and considering the havoc she'd created back in
Paris, it was unlikely that they were going to treat her to
ice cream and send her on her way.
The renewed awareness of her situation knotted her
stomach, but she did her best to put the fear aside. She
needed to think straight, to figure out her options, and
she needed to be ready to act. She wouldn't have sur-
vived Raccoon City if she'd given in to panic...
... except you 're on an island run by Umbrella. Even if
you get past the guards, where can you possibly go?
One predicament at a time. First thing, she should
probably try to stand up. Except for the painful lump at
her right temple from the asshole who'd knocked her
out, she didn't think she'd been injured.
There was another rumble, muffled and far away, and a
bit of rock dust drifted down from above, she could feel it
on the back of her neck. She had integrated the rumbling
sounds into her half-conscious dreams as thunder, but it
definitely sounded like heavy artillery had come to Rock-
fort. Or Godzilla. What the hell was going on out there?
She crept to her feet, wincing at her rifle-butt head-
ache as she brushed dust off her bare arms, stretching
chilled muscles. The underground room was making her
wish she'd worn something warmer than jeans and a
cut-off vest for her meeting with Chris.
.Chris! Oh, please be safe! In Paris, she'd deliber- ately led the Umbrella security team away from Leon
and the others, Rebecca and the two Exeter S.T.A.R.S.;
if Chris hadn't also been caught, Claire figured he'd
have hooked up with the team by now. If she could get
to a computer with an uplink, she should be able to send
a message to Leon...
... yeah, just bend those steel bars, find a couple of ma- chine guns, and mow down the population of the island.
Oh, then hack into a tightly secured relay system, assum- ing you can find an unmanned computer. All so you can
tell Leon that you don't actually know where Rockfort is...
A louder internal voice cut in ... think positive, damnit, you can be sarcastic later, assuming you sur-
vive. What do you have to work with?
Good question. There was no guard, for one thing. It
was also extremely dark, a bare hint of light coming
from somewhere off to the right, which could be an ad-
vantage if...
Claire patted her pockets suddenly, wildly hoping that
no one had searched her when she'd been unconscious,
sure that someone must have - left inside vest pocket,
there it was!
"Idiots," she whispered, pulling out the old metal lighter that Chris had given her awhile back, the com-
forting weight of it warm in her hand. When they'd pat-
ted her down for weapons, a soldier reeking of tobacco
had taken it out, but given it back to her when she'd said
that she smoked.
Claire put the lighter back in her pocket, not wanting
to blind herself now that her eyes were getting used to
the dark. There was enough ambient light for her to
make out most of the small room - a desk and a couple
of cabinets directly across from her cell, an open door to
the left - the same door she'd entered by - a chair and
some miscellaneous crap stacked off to the right.
Okay, good, you know the environment. What else
you got?
Thankfully, her inner voice was a lot calmer than she
was. She quickly went through her other pockets, turn-
ing up a couple of ponytail elastics and two breath mints
in a crumpled roll. Terrific. Unless she wanted to take on
the enemy with a very small, refreshingly peppermint
slingshot, she was shit out of luck...
Footsteps, in the corridor outside the cell room, com-
ing closer. Her muscles tensed and her mouth went dry.
She was unarmed and trapped, and the way a few of
those guards had been looking at her on the trans-
port...
... bring it on. I'm unarmed, maybe, but not defense- less. If someone meant to assault her, sexually or other- wise, she'd make a point of doing some major damage
in return. If she was going to die anyway, she didn't plan
on going out alone.
Thump. Thump. There was only one person out there,
she decided, and whoever it was, he or she was hurting.
The steps were erratic and slow, shuffling, almost like...
No, no way.
Claire held her breath as a lone male figure stepped
haltingly into the room, his arms out in front of him. He
moved like one of the virus zombies, like a drunk, reel- ing and unsteady, and immediately staggered for the
door to her cell. Reflexively, Claire backed away, terri-
fied at the implications - if there'd been some kind of
viral outbreak on the island, at best she'd end up starv-
ing to death behind bars.
And Jesus, another spill? Thousands had died in Rac-
coon City. When would Umbrella learn, that their insane
biological experiments weren't worth the cost?
She had to see. If it was a drunk guard, at least he was
alone, she might be able to take him. And if it was a car-
rier, she was safe for the moment. Probably. They
couldn't operate doors, or at least the ones in Raccoon
hadn't been able to. She took out the lighter, flipped the
top and thumbed the wheel.
Claire recognized him instantly and gasped, taking an-
other step back. Tall and well-built, Hispanic perhaps, a
mustache and dark, merciless eyes. It was the man who'd
caught her back in Paris, who'd escorted her to the island.
Not a zombie, at least there's that. Not much of relief, but she'd take whatever she could get.
She stood for a moment, frozen, not sure what to ex-
pect. He looked different, and it was more than his dirt-
smeared face or the small bloodstains on his white
T-shirt. It was as though there'd been some fundamental
internal change, the way his expression was set. Before,
he'd looked like a stone killer. Now ... now she wasn't
sure, and when he reached into his pocket and pulled out
a set of keys, she prayed that he'd changed for the better.
Without a word, he pulled the cell door open and
blankly met her gaze before jerking his head to one
side - the universal sign for "get out," if there was such
a thing.
Before she could act, he turned and staggered away,
definitely injured from the way he held his gut with one
shaking hand. There was a chair between the desk and
the far wall; he sat down heavily and picked up a small
bottle from the desktop with bloodstained fingers. He
shook the bottle, about the size of a small spool of
thread, before weakly throwing it across the room, mut-
tering to himself.
"Perfect..."
The presumably empty bottle clattered across the ce-
ment floor, rolling to a stop just outside the cell. He
glanced in her direction tiredly, his voice thick with ex-
haustion. "Go on. Get out of here."
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