Steve lifted the axe again, strong, he was so strong, and
slammed it down into the tentacle, slicing through.
In a spray of green fluid, the thick coil snapped and
hit him in the chest, throwing him into the wall before
retreating. He felt and heard ribs break, felt the boil of
his blood cooling, felt his strength going away.
The pain came, sharp and dull and everywhere, but he
opened his eyes and she was there, she was safe, she
was reaching for his hand. Claire Redfield, reaching for
his hand with tears in her eyes.
The monster was gone.
She reached out to hold his hand and he lifted it to his
face, to his beautiful, dying face, laying it across his cheek.
"You're warm," he whispered.
"Hang on," she said, pleading, the knot in her throat choking her, "please, my brother came and he'll take us with him, please don't die!"
Steve's eyes were fluttering, as though he were trying
very hard to stay awake.
"I'm glad your brother came," he whispered, his voice fading. "And I'm glad I met you. I ... I love you." On the last word, his head fell forward, his chest
falling and not rising again, and then Claire was alone.
Steve was gone.
SEVENTEEN
CHRIS RAN, KNOWING THAT THEIR TIME WAS
short as long as Alexia Ashford was alive, afraid that she
might already have gotten to Claire.
"Claire!" he shouted, banging his fist on every door he passed. It didn't matter, his shouting; if Alexia was
even half as powerful as he suspected, she already knew where he was ... and where Claire was.
Please, please don't hurt her, he thought, the thought repeating itself as he ran down another hall, through a
door, another hall, and another. He didn't know if any-
thing could stop Alexia, but if he could find Claire and
get them to the evac elevator, he meant to try and trigger
the self-destruct system before leaving. Alexia was
halfway to omnipotence and purely evil, she was an
apocalypse waiting to happen, and she had to be stopped.
"Claire!"
Through a familiar hallway, another Spencer estate
copy, through a door that opened into some kind of shad-
owy prison, holding cells lining the walls. He had to find
her, if he couldn't, he couldn't leave. He wanted Alexia
dead, but he wouldn't endanger Claire's life, not for any-
thing, and getting her out took absolute priority -
- and somebody was crying behind one of the closed
doors. Chris stopped running and listened, trying not to
breathe, tuning out the relentless banging of a virus car-
rier locked in another cell. Another gasping wail...
Claire, oh, thank God you're alive!
He ripped open the door, ready to hurt anything even
close to her - and saw her sitting on the floor, sobbing,
her arms wrapped around a young man, his naked body
bruised and pitiful. He was dead.
Ah, shit.
It could only be Steve, Claire's friend, and though he
was sorry for the boy he'd never met, Chris's heart was
breaking for her. She looked so fragile, so alone...
... something else to lay at Alexia's doorstep. Chris had no
doubt that Steve had died because of that crazy bitch.
But as much as he wanted to sit down and comfort
Claire, to hold her hand and let her grieve, he knew they
had to get out.
"We have to go now, Claire," he said, as gently as pos- sible and was relieved when she nodded, carefully lay-
ing her friend down, closing his eyes with one trembling
hand. She kissed him on the forehead and then stood up.
"Okay," she said, nodding again. "I'm ready."
She didn't look back, and in spite of everything, he
was proud of her. She was strong, stronger than he
would have been if he'd been asked to leave someone
he'd cared about.
Together, they ran back into the hall, Chris figuring
that they had to be close to the southwest corner of the
building, where he'd landed the jet and seen the emer-
gency evacuation elevator. The self-destruct system was
presumably close enough to the elevator to make a fast
escape possible; if they could just get to that elevator,
he'd check every floor on the way up.
There were stairs at the south end of the hall, and Chris ran for them, Claire at his side. He could feel the seconds
ticking past as they hurried up the steps, felt like time
was closing in on them, that Alexia was finished playing.
Through the door at the top of the stairs, running out
onto a giant metal grid platform - and Chris laughed out
loud when he looked behind them, saw the nondescript
doors of the emergency elevator.
"What?" Claire asked.
He motioned at the doors, grinning. "That'll take us straight to the jet."
Claire nodded, not smiling but she looked relieved.
"Good. Let's go."
Chris had turned back to look at the wall across from
the hit. "I've got to check something first," he said, wanting to take a closer look at the corner door, it
looked Like a security door. "You go, I'll be right there."
"Forget it," Claire said firmly. She walked after him, her eyes red from crying but her chin set and deter-
mined. "No way we're splitting up again."
Chris leaned down to look at the door's locking
mechanism and sighed, standing back up. They were
probably at the self-destruct system already; the lock
was complicated and unique, requiring a key he didn't
have. Besides which, to the right of the door was a
locked-down grenade launcher of some kind, one he
didn't recognize, the bar holding it down labeled emer- gency release only.
Just as well, we should get out while we still can, he thought, but wasn't happy about it. How much more
powerful would Alexia become before another chance
like this one?
"Hey, hey, wait a sec," Claire said, and began rum- maging through the small pack around her waist. Before
he could ask, she was holding up a slender metal key,
shaped like a dragonfly. There was no question that it
would fit the lock.
"I found it back at Rockfort," she said, bending over and pressing it into the indentation. It fit perfectly, the
lock releasing with a solid metallic clink.
"You're going to set off the self-destruct, aren't you,"
Claire said, not really a question. "Do you have the code?"
Chris didn't really answer, thinking that there were an
amazing number of coincidences in life, and sometimes,
they worked to one's advantage.
"Code Veronica," he said softly, and pulled the door open, ready to take it all down, understanding that it was
meant to be.
EIGHTEEN
THE BOY WAS DEAD, BUT THE GIRL WASN'T.
And now the young man was trying to destroy Alexia's
home, and it wasn't a game or an experiment or some-
thing to observe, he had to die, in pain and misery. How
had he dared to consider such a thing? He should be on
his knees in front of her, a worthless supplicant for her
to do with as she wished, how dare he?
Alexia saw the siblings walking away from their
treacherous deed, felt them wishing to leave as the auto-
mated sequence began, lights and sounds flashing, sys-
tems shutting down throughout the terminal. Their
perfidy was useless, of course. She would be able to
stop the destruct sequence with a minimum of effort,
using her control over the organic to sever every con-
nection in the facility, but it was the thought behind the
act that so infuriated her. He had witnessed the glory of
her capabilities, he had seen it and fled in terror ... and
yet he could fancy himself worthy to take a life such as
hers?
Alexia gathered herself, drawing all of her power in,
becoming complete. She knew that the young man had
picked up a weapon that had been sitting next to the
keyboard, a revolver that someone had left behind. She
didn't object, knowing that the firearm would give him
hope, and that for a victory to be complete, the victor
had to take everything. She would take his hope, she
would take his sister's life and then she would take his.
When she was whole, she imagined herself becoming
liquid, traveling through the structure of her surroundings
as easily as the organic extensions she controlled, and
then she was doing so, moving to confront the interlopers.
They were startled, as if they'd expected to succeed.
She slid out from inside her organic carrier, unfolding
herself, turning to look into their dull eyes, their winc-
ing sheep's faces. She watched them watch her, curious
in spite of her anger.
They argued in front of her, he insisting that he would
"handle" things, that the girl should flee. The girl ac-
cepted, but reluctantly, insisting in turn that he should
survive. Following that ludicrous statement, the girl
turned and ran for the elevator.
Alexia moved to intercept, raising her hand to smite
the girl...
... and a perforation opened in her flesh, distracting
her. A bullet had entered her body. She turned and
smiled at him, at the gun in his hand, and reached into
herself, pulling the bullet out and tossing it toward him.
As gratifying as his expression was, the girl was gone
by the time she turned back.
It was time to expand her boundaries, Alexia decided.
To show him what she was, what she could do ... and to put the fear of God into him, because as she closed
her eyes, imagining, wishing, she stopped being Alexia
Ashford and became Wrath, divine and merciless.
NINETEEN
"THE SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE HAS BEEN
activated," a recording intoned, reverberating through the room, crowding out the rest of its message. "You have four minutes thirty seconds to reach minimum safe distance."
Combined with the sirens and flashing emergency lights,
Chris was on sensory overload before the fight even began.
Alexia raised her hand to hit Claire, and Chris fired,
the .357 bucking in his hand, the shot blasting over the
self-destruct alarms, deafeningly explosive.
Yes! A clean hit, right through the gut, and Claire was already at the elevator, pushing the button, stepping in-
side...
... but instead of bleeding, instead of faltering even a
step, Alexia smiled at him. She lifted one of her slender
gray hands and pushed it into her body, the flesh meld-
ing seamlessly, flowing like water. A second later she
held up the round he'd nailed her with and gently tossed
it in his direction.
Bad, this is very, very bad, Chris thought numbly, and then she started to change.
The lithe gray female crouched on the metal grid and
her liquid flesh started to tremble, to form tiny peaks
and dips all across her body, the tissue bubbling, ex-
panding. The peaks became mountains, the dips, val-
leys, all of it gray and swelling as her limbs started to
fold in on themselves. Her arms curved over and joined
the growing mass, the legs disappearing into it, the tex-
ture turning rough and striated, veins like cables rising,
and she kept swelling. Her head rolled down and be-
came part of the giant, rounded body of her, gray be-
coming muscle-tissue red, the purple and blue of blood
vessels networking across like a tide.
"You have four minutes to reach minimum safe dis-
tance," someone said, but Chris barely heard her, he was backing away, becoming more and more convinced that
this was not going to end well. The elevator was
blocked, and she just kept getting bigger
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