Code Veronica re-6

by Стефани Данелл Перри

  – 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 horrible 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 unconventional, 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, sensations 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 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 private, 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 grandfather, was apparently obsessed with secrecy, an obsession 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. Alfred 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, regarding 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 information 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 atmosphere, 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 keeping 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 repeating 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 somewhere 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 besides 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, highwalled 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 earlier; 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 little 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 uncertainly, 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 managed 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, smiling. "… 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 although 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 seriously 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 coffee 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. "I think we've got it," she said softly, "betcha money."

  EIGHT

  Oh, wow. this is … wow, Claire thought. "Wow," Steve whispered, and she nodded, feeling entirely out of her depth as she took in their new environment. Had she said serial killer crazy? More like a serial killer convention.

  There'd been another puzzle after the Lugers had opened the wall, having to do with numbers and a blocked passage, but they'd ignored it completely with both of them pushing, the passage wasn't blocked for long. Outside once again, they could see the private house, perched on a low hill like some brooding vulture in the pouring rain. It was a mansion, really, but nothing like the one they'd just left it was much, much older, darker, surrounded by the decrepit ruins of what had once been some kind of a sculpture garden. Stone cherubs with blind eyes and broken fingers watched them wend their way toward the house, gargoyles with eroding wings, shattered pieces of marble underfoot.

  Creepy, definitely … but this is so far beyond creepy, it's not even in the same category.

  They stood in the foyer, unlit but for a few strategically placed candles. There was a smell of must in the air, an old smell like dust and crumbling parchment. The floor was plushly carpeted, what they could see of it, but so ancient that it had been worn threadbare in many places; it was hard to make out any color beyond "dark." What had once been a grand staircase was directly in front of them, sweeping up to second and third floor balconies; there was still a kind of shabby elegance to its time-blackened banisters and sagging steps, as there was in the dusty library to their right, in the faded, ornately framed oil paintings hanging from flocked walls. The word haunted would have described it perfectly … except for the dolls. Tiny faces stared out at them from every comer. China dolls of fragile porcelain, many of them chipped or discolored, dressed for high tea in water-stained taffeta. Plastic children with roll-open plastic eyes and pursed pink mouths. Rag dolls with strange button faces, bits of stuffing poking out of withered limbs. There were jumbled piles of them, stacks of them, even a few featureless cloth babies impaled on sticks. There was no sane order to their placement that Claire could see.

  Steve nudged her, pointing up. For just a second, Claire thought she was looking at Alexia, hanging from the eaves but of course it was another doll, life-size, this one dressed for her bizarre lynching in a simple party dress, flowered hem floating around her slender synthetic ankles. "Maybe we should…" Claire started … and froze, listening. The sound of someone talking filtered down to them from upstairs, a woman's voice. She sounded irate, the cadence of her speech rapid and harsh.

  Alexia.

  The angry voice was followed by a kind of pleading, whining tone which Claire immediately recognized as Alfred's. "Let's drop in for a chat," Steve whispered, and without waiting for a response, he headed for the stairs. Claire hurried after him, not at all sure it was a good idea, but not wanting to let him go it alone, either. The dolls watched them ascend in silence, staring after them with lifeless eyes, keeping their vigil and their peace as they had for many years.

  Alfred never felt closer to Alexia than when they were together in their private rooms, where they'd laughed and played as children. He felt close to her now, too, but was also deeply distraught by her anger, wanting desperately to make her happy again. It was his fault, after all, that she was upset.

  "…and I simply don't understand why this Claire person and her friend are proving to be such a trial for you," Alexia said, and in spite of his shame, he couldn't stop watching her with adoring eyes, as she gracefully swept across the room in her silken gown. His twin was breathtakingly refined in her displeasure.

  "I won't fail you again, Alexia, I promise…" "That's right, you won't," she said sharply. "Because I intend to take care of this matter myself." Alfred was aghast. "No! You mustn't risk yo
urself, darling, I … I won't allow it!"

  Alexia glared at him for a moment then sighed, shaking her head. She stepped toward him, her gaze soft and loving once more. "You worry too much, brother," she said. "You must remember yourself, remember to always embrace difficulty with pride and vigor. We are Ashfords, after all. We…"

  Alexia's eyes widened, her face paling. She turned toward the window overlooking the corridor outside, slender fingers rising anxiously to the choker at her throat.

  "There's someone in the hall." No! Alexia had to be kept safe, no one must touch her, no

  one! It was Claire Redfield, of course, finally here to fulfill her assignment, to assassinate his beloved. Frantic to protect her, Alfred spun around, searching there, the rifle was leaning against Alexia's dressing table, where he'd left it before opening the attic room passage. He strode toward it, feeling her fear as his own, their anxiety shared as if they were one. Alfred reached for the weapon and hesitated, confused. Alexia had insisted on handling the situation, she might be angry again if he interfered … but if something happened to her, if he lost her… The handle to the door rattled suddenly, just as Alexia stepped forward, snatching up the rifle herself. She barely had time to lift it before the door burst open with a crash. It was the first time in almost fifteen years that their inner sanctum had been breached, and Alexia was so shocked by the intrusion that she didn't fire right away, not wanting Alfred to be hurt, not wanting to die. The two prisoners had guns, had them pointed directly at her. Alexia collected herself, refusing to be terrorized by two children who were both staring at her strangely, their peasant faces expressing confusion and surprise. Apparently they weren't used to audiences with their betters.