Run Like Hell

Dichotomy

18

He pursued the black car on foot down the Clipper Road, sticking to the darkness of the trees on either side. With her in his sights, he bounded through the gloom like a wolf, barely breaking into a sweat as he wove between the trunks, ignoring the sharp, lashing twigs that whipped at his face. His limbs felt loose and incredibly elastic as he ran, keeping an easy pace with the object of his attentions, and yet his heart beat slow and calm, almost at resting speed. It was wonderful. Primal.

Nearly there...

A squat wooden building, decrepit and wrapped in overgrown brambles and bushes - not a bad place for a little family reunion...

He slowed up, slinking to the edge of his cover, watching her with animal interest as she lingered in the driver's seat, tense and pale, gripping the wheel and staring ahead at the cabin in the beam of the lamps. For a spy, she was getting somewhat rusty. Piece of cake to follow her, after watching the black car make a wide circle in the dust and turn back towards Roosevelt, oblivious to him and his dark sedan parked up on the shoulder with the lights off. He'd grinned inwardly as he put a respectable distance between them before tailing her...

Too easy.

The girl was here, of course; there was no doubt about that. He could smell her. And there was a man too, a non-carrier, by the familiar scent...

Not much of a challenge, he thought. It was a pity - he'd only just begun to exercise these new and wonderful abilities - but the real challenge would come soon enough... once he got a blood sample. He smiled to himself, and watched and waited.

19

Leon flattened himself up against the wall, stomach knotted and Desert Eagle in hand, peering out from behind the edge of thick curtain at the blinding headlamps. He could see Ada, clearly framed in the glare as she crossed the driveway. She was armed, though, and seemed uneasy, her steps cautious and slow, which somehow convinced him that she was wounded and probably alone - at least for the time being. Then he saw her stop and glance quickly to the trees on the left, as if she'd heard something, and quickened her pace to the door.

"Leon," she half-shouted in a low, urgent voice. "I'm here."

He didn't move, but kept his eyes focused on the driveway, the barrel of the Eagle cocked and ready for a target. Sherry let her in, bolting the door quickly again behind her on his signal.

"You alone?" Leon asked quietly, feeling suddenly reluctant to leave the window and approach her. Nothing moved outside, save for a couple of moths fluttering in the light...

Ada nodded and exhaled carefully, as if she'd been holding her breath, keeping a little distance from him. She didn't look too good, he thought, glancing briefly at her delicate, pallid features with an apprehensive eye. Then she faltered, staggering forward; and he reached out reflexively to help her.

"Don't!" she gasped, resting against the side of the sofa and brushing the damp hair from her eyes. "...I'm fine."

She saw his expression change, perplexed; and she smiled a strained smile - recognition of his willingness to help, her own helplessness, and the wish to somehow reassure him. But she knew the pretence wouldn't last much longer; it was getting worse, the sensations of dizziness and disorientation... soon she'd be barely able to stand up, let alone control herself...

Willing her limbs to obey, she slid onto the sofa and cradled her gun.

"So... are you gonna tell me what's going on?" he asked, almost commandingly. She nodded, fixing her gaze first on Sherry, who was standing nearby in silent bemusement.

"You can't stay here, Leon - not now. Take the girl and get out of the country. Otherwise, Umbrella will..."

She trailed off, watching the distress well up in the girl's eyes. It had to be said -

"Umbrella will kill to get their creation back... you understand? And the Government are watching you, too. The Pentagon's been babysitting Umbrella for a long time; that's why they've been allowed to go on with their research for so long. After they screwed up at the mansion lab, someone decided it was time to take over..."

"Are you a part of this?" he asked.

"I was expendable. Just like Raccoon City..."

Anger flickered across Leon's face, but he was silent.

"There's a man I once worked for - a while back," she went on, "during the time I met John... he was an insider for Umbrella at the RPD. He never really wanted what Umbrella gave him - so he came back to get the G-Virus himself. He's the one who saved me when I fell... he still wanted the scoop - whatever he could find to blackmail Umbrella... and sell to the highest bidder."

"Albert Wesker?"

"Right."

"He sent you to find me, then, like another Umbrella lackey," Leon chided, his demeanour suddenly cold, expressionless; as if recalling some bitter taste. Something was warring inside him, fighting with his affections, forcing him to take no pity upon her.

"Yes."

"You two were partners, or something?" he asked, hardly caring to keep the sarcasm from his voice. "So what happened?"

"You don't have time for this, Leon," she rapped weakly. "They probably know you're here. Wesker might even know. Take my car. The evidence is in there - everything. Just take the girl and go."

"But what about - " Leon began, looking to Sherry as he digested the warning. He wanted to ask if the virus was still active, if there was a chance it could suddenly come to life again, like the T-virus' unfortunate victims tended to; and he wanted to know if it was still infectious -

...And was there a way to kill it off?

But he couldn't ask in front of Sherry - she was just a kid for crying out loud... she was scared enough already -

Ada exchanged him a meaningful, but empty, glance. "I don't know about... that," she said slowly, with an effort.

True enough. Everything in the labs had gone up in the explosion: the lab reports, the experimental data, the vaccine synthesis equipment... Except for what Wesker himself had retrieved, there was nothing; and there'd been precious little for him to salvage after the outbreak anyway. The frantic survivors trapped in the labs had rifled through everything, including the Devil cold storage, injecting themselves vainly in the hope that they were still in the infant stages of infection...

Only Umbrella could possibly know the answers. And perhaps one other -

"What about you?" Leon pressed.

"I'll stay here," she breathed, painfully. "I'll draw them off from you."

She clutched her gun tight, her eyes meeting his calmly and in earnest. The look he gave her screamed refusal, but she only smiled.

"Go," she pleaded. "There's not much time."

He knew she was right.

"Sherry, get your things," he said.

20

Sherry was scared. That sickening adrenaline feeling was rising from her stomach again and making her legs and hands shake, but she ignored it. She climbed to the balcony and started gathering up the uneaten candy and water bottles, stuffing them into her vest as fast as she could and reaching for her shoes. Below, Leon was grabbing his Magnum clips, filling both pockets of his jacket with them as he pulled it on, and Ada was saying something to him that she couldn't quite make out. She pulled on one shoe, then grabbed the other... and it was then that she noticed the smell.

A strong, almost sickly-sweet scent, like the smell of rotting fruit.

A smell she recognised...

There was a soft tap above her head, and she looked up. The skylight window was dark, dotted with stars, but there was a black shape sprawled out across it, large, like a man -

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came. A burst of gunfire rang out, ricocheting through the vast, empty darkness outside...

"Jesus!" Leon shouted, diving instinctively for the wall nearest the window, and Ada, too, got down. Then came a crash of smashing glass, shards spraying in all directions, spilling across the balcony. Something dark and heavy hit the wooden floor; a moment later Sherry disappeared, leaving only a gaping hole in the skylight window -

- And silence.

"The hell was that?" Leon panted. "It got Sherry!"

"Wesker!" Ada whispered, rising and feeling suddenly light-headed again. "He followed me..."

"That thing was Wesker?" he breathed. He'd only seen it for a split-second, a shadow too dark to define, but it had wrapped itself around the girl before bounding back up through the roof with inhuman prowess. No man could possibly jump like that -

"He's a carrier, too," she answered, "like one of those things. Still human... but stronger."

"Oh, great," Leon spat, running for the door.

"He's too fast," she protested, but Leon was already outside, slamming a full clip into the Desert Eagle as he ran. He heard the snapping of twigs underfoot to the right and darted off into the trees, holding out an arm to protect his face from the branches. From inside the cabin, Ada heard several powerful shots from the Eagle echo through the night, but knew that none would find their mark.

Wesker and Sherry were gone.

21

Sherry squirmed desperately, but it was no use. A hand was clamped tight over her mouth, and another arm had her in a vice-like grip. The man-thing was fast, terribly fast, leaping through the shadows like a wild thing, and he smelled very much like one of the monsters... that sweet, rotting smell. The air rushed past and pine needles slapped at her as she was borne through the dark, choking on her terror, and she felt sure she was going to die.

After what seemed an eternity of being jostled and shaken and scratched, she found herself suddenly being jammed into the back seat of a car, head-first. She kicked out instinctively with her legs and screamed, pulling herself as far away from her attacker as she could, its hand still gripping her leg.

"My my, we're feisty, aren't we?" it said suddenly, in a human voice. A mocking voice. Sherry stopped struggling for a moment, shocked that the thing could talk, realising that it was indeed a man, or at least half-man; but the brief realisation afforded no less dread. She backed as far away as she could into the small space, bringing her knees up and panting, reminded abruptly of her miserable experience in Raccoon, cowering alone for hours on end in vent shafts and filthy ducts. The man chuckled and leered a moment, and Sherry saw that he was wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, even in the gloom. Then he reached into his jacket for something. Something small and thin - pulling off a cap and holding it up with one hand, tapping it gently with the index finger of the other.

She yelped and shrank back, the stab of the syringe causing her to scrabble hopelessly for the door lock on the other side as the world went cold and black and fell away from her.