Run Like Hell

Seethe

24

Walker could see the black suits and shades of two men on the ground below, their nondescript faces set impassively beneath billowing side partings as the chopper touched down. They waited for him to gather his briefcase and jacket, motionless, almost menacing, like bearers of ill news.

"Dom Walker?" the taller of the two addressed him as he hopped from the board, rubbing his aching, bald head in the bright sunlight. "My name's Ash, Covert Ops division."

"Heard a lot about you," Walker answered with a nod. Ash didn't offer to shake, and he was glad; he didn't care much for the Pentagon's errand-boys. "Come to stick me a poison pen?"

Ash grinned emptily, suggestive to Walker of a maniacal puppet. The other man was silent, expressionless. Another guy might have found this 'happy-and-sad' duo rather intimidating; but not Walker. He met Ash's chiselled smirk squarely, barely a flicker of emotion in his black, humourless eyes.

"We've got a problem," Ash grunted, his grin melting away. "The renegade operative is still alive. We know he obtained a sample of the G-Virus before Raccoon went up."

"Does he still have it?" Walker demanded calmly, looking slowly from Ash to his silent cohort.

"Every chance. He's still got HCF connections in Europe. Most likely he'll attempt to defect."

"Then we'll need an undertaker."

"S.W.A.T.?"

"The best. Not your goddamn trainees, this time. Give me everything you've got."

Without another word, Walker turned and left them on the helipad in the rising sun, his stride quickening with each step.

25

It felt like being laid out on a cold slab, surrounded by a thick, breathing darkness; and for a long time she lay there, without thought or movement, merely listening and feeling. There was a sound, at first dull and distant, rhythmic; like the rushing of rivers and the beating of something hollow and heavy against the walls of her mind. She couldn't remember when it had begun, or at what point she had first noticed it, pulsing quietly and constantly away in the darkness that seemed so very much alive. It was a sound not unfamiliar; reaching back into the time beyond memory, back to the womb, and the wombs of all things; like the incessant beating of a great heart, and the pounding of blood through a million veins and capillaries. How long she had been listening to it in that place she could not know; and yet it had become louder, grown gradually, imperceptibly, from the first faint thrummings to a rush that was almost deafening.

Paralysis, too, she had grown aware of. In the interminable darkness, deadened limbs, though she could not see them, had begun to feel leaden, her body pressed to the slab under it own crushing weight. Powerless, even breathing had become an exertion, a conscious effort. This place was airless, like a tomb.

Thoughts gathered with agonising slowness. She could remember nothing before the blackness, before the heartbeat and the rushing blood; but she was aware, perceiving blindly the seething throb around her, enveloping her...

Claustrophobia. Suffocation. Smothering.

These things she knew and felt without the words to define them. The desire to move laid hold of her, writhing, clawing, almost panicked; to clamber out of this crypt, this hateful, asphyxiating womb - to breathe against the drowning, force her languid, atrophic limbs into seizures of motion...any motion. But her body resisted the desire, refusing to comply. It had become suddenly another prison, an unbearable, inescapable cage, denying even her harried screams. With the severing of mind and body, absolute revulsion gripped the senses, twisting like tortured metal what sanity was left in that bubbling, tormented cry.

And Leon watched her sleep; sleep the unwaking slumber of the living dead. She sat upright, limp and pale as a doll, seemingly peaceful and free of pain; the subtle rise and fall of her chest the only sign of any life within.

But the life was growing, not diminishing. As certain as the heartbeat grew louder and stronger in her ears, had the heart itself gained in size and strength. Now it beat stronger than it ever had, the roar of its labours filling her living tomb, every nerve and fibre quivering to its frenzied tempo.

For three days she slept.

When she awoke, the world was distant and unfamiliar, as if she were gazing out at it from beneath dark and murky waters. She saw things that she did not recognise, familiar shapes and colours that swam in her vision, seeking names and purposes. There was also a human face, and the wide eyes terrified her. Shrinking back into the passenger seat with a sudden involuntary fear, she heard a voice speaking words she could barely comprehend.

"Ada? Ada! ...Are you okay?"

He was almost as startled as she. A violent convulsion wracked her body, and she passed out again briefly. Pouring water gently over her face and lips, Leon saw it stir the jaw muscles as they reacted mechanically to the touch of the cool, vital droplets. Before long, Ada had regained most of her senses, gripping the bottle and drinking it dry without a word. She sat, holding the empty plastic container, watching him timidly and trying to remember him.

"How are you feeling?" he ventured slowly, at length.

Ada toyed with the container, looking hard at it, then back at Leon. She seemed to be searching for words. Words that felt so far away...

"Alive," she said at last, in a voice that was cracked and hoarse from sleep.

Yes - that was the word. She felt alive.

And alive was good. Even if she had no idea where she was, or even who she was...

"We're almost in Chicago," he half-whispered, motioning his head to the scene outside. It was a gas station, the late afternoon sun streaming down onto the baked concrete, and it hurt her eyes to look.

"I was going to take you to a hospital... but I don't think that would be a good idea anymore, huh?"

Ada closed her eyes. The beat in her head was receding, and the world was growing clearer, more defined. She could smell the cold leather of Leon's jacket around her shoulders, mingled with his own scent; and the acrid tang of diesel, mixed with the sweeter, sharper reek of gasoline. There were other countless and subtler smells, human, animal, chemical... some she'd never before noticed, given the poor olfactory capacity of the human she'd once been. There were myriad sounds too, voices and footsteps; clanging and echoes, a quarter hitting the ground with a ring like glass, the bark of a dog magnified a thousand times...

Leon.

The scent on the jacket was Leon; and she remembered.

"Chicago," she repeated, automatically. "I was... going there..."

"Wesker," Leon pressed. "You told me he would be here. Do you know where he took Sherry?"

"Wesker..."

"Do you remember?" he asked again in a softer voice, leaning closer. "Albert Wesker. The S.T.A.R.S. guy working for Umbrella?"

She blinked. Vague and faceless recollections hovered in her memory, just below the visible surface. But the name...

"Nickson... Nickson Street..."

...The bar where she had met John. Same street as the Umbrella Chicago Branch Company building.

26

Sherry struggled dazedly against her bonds as she was lifted bodily and slung over the man-thing's back. A dizzying drop beneath the metal catwalk yawned up from below, but he moved with a cool and purposeful gait, heeding neither the height nor the enormous Umbrella logo that confronted him at the other side. At the end of a short bleak corridor was an airlock, branded with the familiar forbidding biohazard warning signs.

"Hi honey, I'm home!" he shouted cheerfully, laying his free hand on a metal console jutting from the wall close by. With a single, fluid movement, he ripped the steel casing from its bolts and tossed it away, revealing a glowing green panel and a few blinking buttons. Placing a flattened palm to it, he threw his head back and waited impatiently.

"Fingerprint unauthorised," a cold, computerised female voice floated back. "Access denied."

"Yeah, yeah," he grunted, punching in a reserve code.

Sherry squirmed, still feeling sick and shaky from the last doses of barbiturate. She was almost glad of the voice, rejecting the man's efforts. Wherever he was taking her, it would probably be better not to arrive... though she knew in her heart that he would not simply give up his endeavours. Obviously, he'd gone to a lot of trouble to find and capture her, and bring her to this place; but if the doors were strong enough, he might have no choice...

"Verification unauthorised. Access denied," came the automated reply in the hollow passage.

"Don't you remember me, baby?" he laughed loudly, addressing the voice with mock concern. "The prodigal son returns..."

With that, he tensed. Sherry watched with abhorrence as his free arm suddenly bulged, muscles popping up, the tendons standing out like cords. He brought it down on the console with a brute and frightening force, smashing the screen and gutting out the wires. After a moment or two of careful scrutiny, he selected two of the wires and stripped the insulation, sparking them together. Then, with a sharp, hydraulic hiss, the door unlocked itself.

"Second rate planning, as ever," he sneered at it, and carried Sherry inside.

...Into a sterile, dismal-looking L-shaped room.

Although Sherry couldn't know it, it was almost identical to the room where Claire had synthesized the Devil vaccine for her in the Raccoon lab. There were weird machines on the walls, hospital stretchers and surgeon's gear nearby, reminiscent of an operating theatre from the movies. He set her down on a bed, restraining her carelessly with one of the straps that accompanied it, and started casting about for something. A cold cabinet seemed to pique his interest as he dug around, letting fall whatever failed to meet his need.

Sherry raised her head to look around.

How had she got here?

More importantly, where WAS here?

The man continued to flail about noisily among the racks and bottles in the cabinet.

Medium: there ought to be some around there, he thought; virus particles couldn't simply be gathered up and stored like bacteria; they needed living cells to parasitise whilst in transit, cells in a stable transport medium...

Soon he returned, a couple of tubes of garish pink gel and a black case in his hands. Working quickly, he unscrewed the metal top of one, and prepared a syringe. At the sight of it, Sherry began writhing again madly, screaming through the tape and kicking her legs, but there was little she could do to prevent him from baring her arm for it.

"I'd calm down if I were you," he warned. "Move and it'll hurt more."

She stopped moving.

"You really are a smart kid," he remarked, guiding the needle to a vein. Sherry watched, wincing as it pierced the skin, rapidly staining the insides of the tubes crimson with her virus-bearing blood.

"Not surprising," he went on, chuckling, as if to himself. "Being Birkin's daughter...huh? I bet you've got the old man's brains, alright. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you; we're family after all..."

Sherry didn't understand; nor did she want to understand what the man who smelled like a monster was talking about. She gave him a quizzical look, charged with fear, trying to keep both the man and the needle in her sights at once.

"That's right," he whispered conspiratorially, a thin half-smile playing on his bloodless lips. "Our genetic makeup is almost identical - thanks to the Progenitor variants your murdering daddy created. And now he's going to make me one rich son of a bitch..."

Sherry jerked her arm suddenly away, letting out a muffled yell. The needle came out, and the man cursed. A spasm of anger shot through him, and a bizarre change came over his features, a rippling, like a passing shadow, sliding swiftly across his face and turning it a brief and livid hue of red; for a moment, his eyes, too, seemed to gorge with blood. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.

He tapped the tubes and held them up, satisfied, placing them lovingly into the foam recesses of the black case.

His work was almost done.

Almost, but not quite.