by S. D. Perry
"Come on, sweetie, I think the ride's over. Let's see where we ended up, okay? And stay close."
They moved out of the transport room and onto the platform, the distant sounds not so distant any-more and there was light, coming from somewhere behind the lift. Claire took Sherry's hand as they walked quickly around, not wanting to worry the girl but feeling pretty sure that it was an alarm they were hearing. There was definitely someone speaking over the rhythmic squeals, too, and Claire wanted to know what they were saying. The lift had stopped only a few feet down from some kind of a service tunnel, the light she'd seen coming from a caged bulb that hung down from the tunnel's ceiling. There wasn't a door, but there was a decent-sized crawl space at the end of the short passage; it would have to do.
It's either that or climb back to the surface, probably only a mile or so up…
Not a chance. Claire boosted Sherry up and then climbed after her, moving to the front and then crouch-walking to the dark hole. The bleating sound got louder the closer she got to the crawl space, the mumble transforming into a woman's voice. She strained to hear the words, hoping that she'd catch "elevator malfunction" and "temporary", but she still couldn't make it out. They'd have to abandon the lift and hope that they were leaving it for something better. Claire swiveled around, sighing. "Looks like crawl
time for me and thee, kiddo. I'll go first, and then…"
SLAM! Sherry shrieked as something landed on the roof of the transport behind them, crashing through the top in a thundering clap of rending metal. Claire grabbed her, pulling her close, her breath caught in her throat…… and a hand, two hands appeared through the hole in the roof. Two thick arms, clad in shadow…… and the gleaming white of Mr. X's enormous skull rose up from the destroyed lift, like a dead moon on a starless night. Claire turned and pushed Sherry toward the dark– ness of the crawl space, her heart hammering, her body suddenly slick with sweat.
"Go! Go, I'm right behind you!"
Sherry disappeared into the curving black, darting out of sight like a frightened mouse, and Claire didn't look back, was too scared shitless to look back as she followed Sherry into the hole, their relentless stalker surely climbing through the shattered elevator to continue his determined and unfathomable hunt. Ada had heard pieces of Annette's screaming rant from the shadows of the catwalk hub, where the three metal spans joined. She'd forced herself not to rush to Leon's aid, promising herself that if she heard shots, she'd reconsider…… but then the laboratory facility had been vio– lently shaken, and the bland voice of the recording started its loop.
Shit!
Ada staggered to her feet, furious at the woman scientist, a part of her aching for Leon, knowing what this meant. Annette had triggered the fail-safe, which meant they probably had less than ten minutes to get the hell out of Dodge…
… and Leon doesn't know the way.
No, not important. If she was going to collect the sample, which Annette surely had on her, she needed to do it now. Leon wasn't her problem, he'd never been her problem, and she couldn't quit now, not after the hell she'd been through to get Trent's pre– cious virus. Ada took a single step away from the main fuse panel that connected the three catwalks and heard the pounding footsteps coming toward her, footsteps too heavy to be Annette's. She slid back into the shadows and around to the span that led west, press-ing herself against the hub's frame. A second later, Leon went running past, probably back to where he thought she'd be waiting for him.
Ada took a deep breath, blowing it out as she swept Leon from her mind, and hurried across the southern bridge to find Annette.
Ada was gone.
"…has been activated. This auto-destruct sequence…" "Shut up, shut up…" Leon hissed, standing help-lessly in the middle of the room, his stomach knotted, his hands balled into fists. When she'd heard the alarm, she must have pan– icked and run. She was probably stumbling through the giant facility, lost and dazed, maybe looking for him as that infernally calm voice repeated, as the sirens blared and rang.
The transport lift!
Leon turned and ran back through the door and saw that it was gone, a large empty hole a few feet deep where it had been. He'd been too intent on getting to Ada, he hadn't even noticed that it wasn't there anymore…
… we have to find that tunnel, we have to! Without the lift, we're trapped here!
With a silent howl of frustration, Leon turned and ran back toward the catwalks, praying that he would find her before it was too late.
The crawl space ended abruptly, stopping over at least a seven-foot drop to an empty tunnel. Her ears ringing, her mouth dry as dust, Sherry grabbed the edges of the square hole, closed her eyes, and jumped. She swung out over the hall and let go as soon as she was straight up and down, landing crooked and falling as her right leg crumpled. It hurt, but she hardly felt it, scrambling on hands and knees to get out of the way, staring up at the hole…… and there was Claire, her head coming out, her wide, worried eyes taking in that she was okay, that the hall was empty and safe… except that there were bells ringing and a woman on an intercom was talking, and Mr. X was coming. Claire stretched her arm down as far as she could with the gun. "Sherry, I need you to hold this, I can't turn around."
Sherry stood and reached up, grabbing the barrel, amazed at how heavy the gun was as Claire let go. "Don't point it at anything," Claire breathed, and then she actually dove out of the hole, curling her body and landing on her shoulder, her head tucked in tight. She did a half-somersault and then her legs banged into the concrete wall.
Before Sherry could even ask if she was all right, Claire was on her feet, taking the gun and pointing to the door at the end of the hall. "Run!" she said, and started to run herself, one hand pushing on Sherry's back as they sprinted for the door, as the intercom voice told them to get out, told them that a self-destruct sequence had been activated…… and behind them, a sound of crashing metal tore through the blaring noise of the sirens, and Sherry ran faster, terrified.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Annette birkin crawled out from beneath the crushing weight of the cold metal, still holding the gun, the G-Virus gone. As she opened her mouth to scream her fury, to rail to the Gods at the injustice of her terrible plight, blood dribbled out across her lips in a thick streamer of clotted drool.
– mine mine mine -
Somehow, she made it to her feet.
Ada told herself that she didn't deserve Leon Ken-nedy's good opinion anyway. She'd never deserved it.
Forgive me…
As he ran back across the catwalk from the trans– port bay area and swung west, running blind with fear for her, she stepped out of the hub's shadows and pointed the Beretta at his back.
"Leon!"
He spun around, and Ada felt her throat lock at the relief that spread across his face and struggled not to feel anything more as the joy turned sour, his grin fading.
Oh, Jesus, forgive me! "I've been waiting for you," she said, and felt no pride at how smooth and steady her voice sounded. How very cold. The alarms blared, the mechanical voice almost as icy as hers, telling them that the fail-safe couldn't be shut down. She didn't have time to let him get used to the idea, that she was as much a monster as the Birkin-thing or one of the soulless zombies. "The G-Virus," she said. "Give it to me." Leon didn't move. "She was telling the truth," he said, no anger but more pain than Ada wanted to hear. "You work for Umbrella." Ada shook her head. "No. Who I work for is no concern of yours. I… I…"
For the first time in years, since she'd been a very young girl, Ada felt the sting of tears and suddenly she hated him for that, for making her hate herself. "I tried!" she wailed, her composure blown by the fierce torrent of anger that coursed through her. "I tried to leave you, back in the factory! And you had to take it from Birkin, didn't you, you couldn't just leave it alone!"
She saw pity on his face, and felt the fury pass, swept away on a wave of sorrow for what she'd lost, with him; for the part of herself she'd lost a long, long
time ago. She wanted to tell him about Trent. About the missions in Europe and Japan, about how she'd become what she was, about every event in her miserable, successful life that had brought her to this place – holding a weapon on a man who'd saved her. A man she might have cared about, in a different time and place. The clock was ticking. "Hand it over," she said. "Don't make me kill you." Leon stared into her eyes, and said, simply, "No." A second gone, then another. Ada lowered the Beretta. Leon steeled himself for the shot, for the bullet from Ada's gun that would kill him…… and she slowly lowered the weapon, her shoul– ders sagging, a tear running down one porcelain cheek. Leon blew out his held breath, feeling too many things, a jumble of sadness and betrayal – and pity, for the tortured struggle in her beautiful dark gaze and a shot rang out from the shadows behind her. Ada's eyes went wide, her mouth falling open as she pitched forward, the gun hitting the floor, her body hitting the rail and flipping over.
"Ada, no!"
He ran and dove, and somehow she caught the rail as he grabbed her wrist, her body dangling over the bottomless dark, blood spouting from her hanging, shattered shoulder.
"Ada, hold on!"
* * * "Mine," Annette whispered. She raised the handgun again, intending to shoot the other, to take back what was hers, to make them all pay…… and the gun was too heavy, it was falling, and she was falling with it. Together, they fell to the dark metal, the dark, the dark spinning up into her mind and finally taking her pain away.
William…
It was her very last thought before she went to sleep.
The door opened into a room filled with screaming machines, the howls and hisses of the humming, rattling giants drowning out the shrill call of the alarm warning. Claire ran, pulling and pushing Sherry along, look– ing desperately for a way out, knowing that the monster was close.
What does he want, why us?
There, a platform in the corner some six feet off the floor, a stack of crates pushed to one side just be-neath it. "This way!" Claire screamed, and they ran, past the rows of shuddering metal consoles, heat pouring from the machines as Claire pushed Sherry up and then climbed after her. Crash! She turned, saw that the massive creature was ripping through the door across the room, striding into the screaming heat and searching, searching… At the end of the platform, a double metal hatch. They dashed for it, Claire not thinking of anything but how to get away, how to destroy a thing that had survived all that it had…… the door was unlocked, and they ran onto anoth– er platform; the heat in the shadowy chamber was searing, terrible…… and a dead end. Claire saw that before they'd taken a half-dozen running strides into the massive room. They were on the overseer's platform in a foundry, the boiling heat rising up from the heavy smelting vats below. She had twelve bullets, split between two guns. Claire stumbled to the edge of the platform, Sherry next to her, the electric orange of the molten metal bathing them in its fevered glow. Hot enough to burn anything…
How? How do I make him jump? "Sherry, go over there!"
She pointed to the farthest corner of the platform, and Sherry shook her head, her small face trembling with fear. "Do it! Now!" Claire shouted, and with a cry of terror, Sherry ran, her locket banging against the open flaps of the denim vest -
– not a locket -
– and Sherry screamed, and Claire turned, and Mr. X was coming.
He walked into the chamber, as stiff and huge and impossible as when she'd first seen him, the eerie orange light turning him into even more of a night– mare. Claire stood her ground, jamming Irons's gun into her shorts, the half-formed plan running through her frightened mind. It probably wouldn't work but she had to try -
–he reaches for me, I jump over the railing, I grab on, he falls -
Mr. X turned his blank gaze toward her as he took his floor-shaking, measured steps, the black bullet holes in his face and throat just pockets of shadow in the smooth, terrible pumpkin light…… and he turned toward Sherry, and raised his fists, and started for her. "Hey! Hey, I'm here!" Claire screamed, and he didn't hear her, didn't see her, his entire monstrous being focused on the cowering, sobbing girl huddled against the far wall, clutching her locket…… and Claire knew what he wanted. The half remembered phrases from both Sherry and Annette came together in a flash of awareness, forming the answer.
G-Virus, rip her apart, good luck charm.
Not a locket.
"Sherry, he wants the necklace! Throw it to me!"
If she was wrong, they were both dead. Mr. X closed in on the girl, blocking her from Claire's view…… and the pendant, the G-Virus pendant that An-nette Birkin had inflicted on her young daughter came flying through the heated dark, hitting the floor in front of Claire's feet. Mr. X reeled around, following the path of the thrown pendant with his black eyes, forgetting Sherry the second the necklace left her grasp. It was true.
Good girl!
Claire scooped it up, waving it at the monster, feeling a rush of incredible anger and malicious glee as the bloated giant started toward her with unwaver-ing intent, fists raising again, his lifeless features fixed on the glittering pendant. "You want this?" Claire taunted, the words spilling out of the fury, for the wasted bullets, for the fear that she and Sherry had suffered. "Yeah? Then come and get it, you miserable, mindless freak!"
The monster was less than five feet away when Claire turned and threw it into the bubbling, burning hot pool, the necklace disappearing into the melted iron…… and the superman creature that had terrorized them throughout the endless night walked straight into the rail, the metal bars snapping in his all– powerful wake…… and plunged silently into the giant vat, a great wave of sizzling metal sloshing over the blackened sides, spontaneous eruptions of flame dancing up from the dark shape of his body as he disappeared beneath the surface of the molten lake. Triumph, sweet and wonderful – and then the cool voice of the recording changed suddenly, wiping away the joy of seeing Mr. X take a lava bath. Over the shrill blasts of the mechanical sirens.
"There are five minutes to reach minimum safe distance. All remaining personnel should evacuate immediately. Please report to the bottom platform. Repeat, please report to the bottom platform. Re-peat…"
Sherry was at her side, and Claire grabbed her hand, and they ran.
The pain was incredible, and Ada closed her eyes, wondering if she would die from it.
"Ada, hang on! Just hang on, I'll pull you up!"
Through the throbbing, pounding sirens that as-saulted her ears, Ada heard the countdown for the fail-safe start to run. Five minutes.
He tries to save me, we both die.
Leon's grip was strong, the determination in his panicked, pleading voice almost as strong as her own will. Almost, but not quite. Ada turned her face up to his, saw that in spite of it all, he still wanted her to survive, he wanted to help her up and carry her away to the safety of escape.
Not this time. Not for me…
Her life had been about selfishness, about ego and greed. She'd seen a lot of good people die, and somewhere along the way, she'd lost the ability to care – telling herself that even the effort was a waste of time and a sign of weakness.
And I was wrong, I was selfish and wrong and now it's too late.
Not too late. Whatever waited beneath her, the decision was made. "Leon, go down, west, and find the cargo room, past the row of plastic chairs. You'll need the disk, it's in my… pouch…"
"Ada, I have it! Cargo disk, right, I have it, I found it – don't talk, just hold on, let me help you!" He fumbled at the rail, trying to maintain his grip. Talking was a horrible effort, but she had to finish, had to tell him before time ran out.
"The code is 345. Get to the elevator, Leon. Take it down. The subway tunnel leads out. Have to run full throttle… and watch out for Birkin, the G-carrier, he… he's changing by now. Got it?"
Leon nodded, his blazing blue eyes filling her up. "Live," she said, and it was a good word, a word to go out on. She was tired, and the mission was wrap
ped, and Leon would live. She let go of the railing, and Leon screamed her name, and the sound of it followed her down into the dark like a bittersweet good-bye.
TWENTY-NINE
Sherry was scared, but mr. x was dead and he must have been the monster all along, not the one at the station but the real monster, the one that had wanted to rip her apart all along…… but she didn't have time to think about it as Claire sprinted, jerking her along back the way they'd come, through the machine room, through the hall with the crawl space and around a corner…… and Sherry screamed as a zombie reeled toward them, a dead white creature made of dusty bone, and Claire raised her gun and shot…… bang, and the dry white head caved in, the moaning dead creature crumpled to the floor, and then Claire was dragging her over the body and running for the door at the end of the hall. It was an elevator, and Sherry collapsed against one wall after Claire pulled her inside, trying to catch her breath as Claire punched the controls. After the speed of their run from Mr. X, the elevator's descent was a crawl, a softly humming crawl. "We're gonna make it," Claire gasped, "just a little longer."
Sherry nodded, her heart pounding even harder as the intercom voice told them that they had four minutes left to be safe.
Leon felt like he didn't know how to stand up and walk away. The image of her composed, beautiful face in the second before she'd let go… she's gone. Ada's dead.
He reached for the Beretta, fresh grief washing over him as he picked it up, the weapon still warm from her touch – and it was too light, too light by half because it wasn't loaded. There wasn't even a clip. She'd never meant to hurt him; she'd lied, she'd lied all along, but she'd never meant to hurt him at all.
"… are four minutes to reach minimum safe dis-tance. All remaining personnel should evacuate im-mediately. Please report to the bottom platform…"
