SEVENTEEN
ADA RAN INTO THE CELL BLOCK ONLY A STEP
behind Leon, just in time to see the reporter stumble
out of his cage and fall to the floor. "Help him!" Leon
shouted, and ran past Bertolucci to check out the cell.
Ada stopped in front of the gasping reporter but
ignored the command, waiting to see if whatever had
gotten to him was going to spring out of the open
cell...
... he was behind bars, how did this happen.
She waited, weapon pointed after Leon as he leapt
in front of the open cell, her heart pounding - and
saw the bewilderment on his youthful face, the open
surprise. The way his gaze searched the cell told her
that it was empty. Unless the attacker was invisible.
. .
Not a chance. Don't even start thinking like that,
don't let it get to you.
Ada knelt next to the reporter, taking in immediately
that he was in a bad way - dying bad. He'd
crumpled into a half-sitting position, his head against
the bars of the cell adjacent to his. He was still
breathing, but it wouldn't be long before he stopped.
Ada had seen the look before, the far-seeing gaze and
the trembling, the pallor, but what she didn't see
was how, and that scared her. There were no wounds.
It had to be a heart attack, maybe a stroke -
- but that scream.
"Ben? Ben, what happened?"
His flickering gaze fixed on her face, and she saw
that the corners of his mouth were cracked and
bleeding. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that
came out was a rasping, unintelligible croak.
Leon crouched down next to them, looking as
confused as she felt. He shook his head at her, an
unspoken answer to her unasked question; there was
apparently no sign of what had happened.
Ada looked down at Bertolucci and tried again.
"What was it, Ben? Can you tell us what happened?"
The reporter's shaking hands crawled up his body,
resting across his chest. With a visible effort, he
managed to whisper a single word.
". . . window. . ."
Ada wasn't reassured. The cell's "window" was
hardly a foot across, maybe six inches wide, and set
eight feet off the floor - nothing more than a ventilation
hole that opened into the parking garage. Nothing
could have gotten through - at least nothing that
she'd heard of or read about, and that meant that
there were dangers she wasn't prepared against.
Bertolucci was still trying to speak. Both Ada and
Leon leaned closer, straining to catch his painful
whispers.
". . . chest. Burns, it... burns . . ."
Ada relaxed just a bit. He'd seen or heard something
outside of the cell, something that had kicked
off a massive coronary; that, she could accept.
A pisser for the journalist, but it would save her the
trouble of killing him herself. . .
He reached out suddenly and grasped her forearm,
staring up at her with an intensity that surprised her.
His grip was weak, but there was desperation in his
wet eyes - desperation and some frustrated sorrow
that inspired not a little guilt for what she'd been
thinking.
"I never told . . . about Irons," he breathed, obviously
struggling to hang on to life, to get it all out.
"He's ... working for Umbrella ... all this time. The
zombies ... are Umbrella, research ... and he covered
up the murders but I couldn't ... prove it all, yet...
was going to be my ... exclusive."
Bertolucci closed his braised-looking eyelids, breathing
shallowly as his fingers fell away from her arm, and
she felt a surge of pity for him in spite of herself.
The poor dumb jerk; his big secret was that Umbrella was
into bioweapons and that Irons was on the take. It
would have been a big scoop, too, but apparently he
hadn't even been able to get any hard evidence.
He doesn't know dick about the G-Virus, he never
did - and he's going to die regardless. Talk about a shit
deal.
"Jesus," Leon said softly. "Chief Irons..."
Ada had all but forgotten how clueless the young
cop was. He was obviously new, but a couple of times
he'd seemed so perceptive that she'd been taken
aback; the kid wasn't just a testosterone case, there
was definitely something going on upstairs...
... knock it off already, he's not much younger than
you. The reporter's about to kick and you need to be on
your way, not worrying about Officer Friendly...
Bertolucci spasmed suddenly, his hands clutching
at his chest as he moaned, a sharp, tortured cry of
agony. His back arched, his fingers hooked into
claws...
... and the moan went liquid as blood started to
stream from his mouth in a burbling gout. Choking
and shaking, Bertolucci's limbs convulsed violently,
droplets of crimson spraying out with each racking
cough...
... and Ada saw red blossom across his rumpled
white shirt beneath his scrabbling hands and heard
the thick, wet crack of breaking bone. She leapt back
as Leon grabbed for the reporter's hands, not sure
what was happening but absolutely positive that it
was not a heart attack...
... holy Christ what IS this?
All at once, Bertolucci went limp, his eyes rolled
back and fixed, sightless. Blood still oozed from his
cracked lips and there was a sound, a horrible sound
of meat being torn, and under the stained fabric of his
shirt, something moved.
"Get back!" Ada shouted, pointing her Beretta at
the dead reporter, and in the split-second it took her
to aim, a thing erupted from Bertolucci's bloody
chest. A thing the size of a big man's fist, a goredrenched
thing that opened a tiny black hole of a
mouth and squealed shrilly, revealing nubs of sharp
red teeth. It wriggled out of the corpse with a whipping
manta's tail, splashing the cold cement with
shreds of wet tissue and gut.
Lashing against the cooling flesh of the reporter, it
poured from the body in a gush of blood and onto the
floor - and took off like a shot for the open gate back
into the hall, propelling itself with its snaking tail and
legs that Ada couldn't see, smearing a red path behind
it.
It was out the door before she even remembered
that she was holding a gun; for the first time since
she'd come to Raccoon, since ever, she had been so
completely shocked that she hadn't thought to react.
A chest-bursting parasitic creature, straight out of a
sci-fi movie. . .
"Was that ... did you see..." Leon fumbled breathlessly.
"I saw it," Ada said softly, cutting him off. She
turned and looked down at Bertolucci, at his face,
frozen in a bloody contortion of anguish, and at the
gaping wet cavity just below his sternum.
His mouth, cracked at the corners. . .
He'd been implanted with the creature, by what,
she didn't know, and she didn't want to know. What
she wanted was to get the mission wrapped, as quickly
as possible, and then get as far away from Raccoon
City as she could. In fact, she thought that she'd never
wanted anything quite so badly. When she'd first
realized that there had been a T-Virus incident, she'd
expected to have to deal with some unpleasant organisms.
But the thought of having one of them forced or
forcing its way down her throat, nestling inside of her
body like some slick, aberrant fetus before eating its
way out. . . if that wasn't the most horrible thing she
could think of, it ran a close second.
She looked at Leon, giving up any pretense of trying
to be reasonable. She was going to the lab, and it
wasn't open to discussion.
"I'm getting out of here," she said, and without
waiting for a response, she turned and walked briskly
toward the gate, careful not to step on the glistening
trail of blood that the tiny monster had created.
"Wait! Look, I think ... Ada? Hey..."
She stepped into the corridor, weapon raised, but
the creature was gone. The blood trail petered out less
than halfway down the hall, but she saw that they'd
left the door to the kennel open...
... and the manhole cover's off. Terrific.
Leon caught up to her before she'd gone more than
a few steps. He stood in front of her, blocking her
path, and for just a moment, Ada thought he was
going to try to physically stop her.
Don't do it. I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I
have to.
"Ada, please don't go," Leon said, not a command
but a plea. "I ... when I got to Raccoon, I met this girl,
and I think she's in the station somewhere. If you
could help me find her, the three of us could leave
together. We'd stand a much better chance..."
"Sorry, Leon, but it's a free goddamn country. You
do what you have to, and good luck, but I'm not
staying. I've had enough. If - when I get out, I'll send
help."
She started to push past him, hoping it wouldn't
come to violence and wishing that she could tell him
not to get in her way - how dangerous it would be for
him to try - when Leon surprised her yet again.
"Then I'm coming with you," he said. He met her
gaze evenly, his own unflinching and resolute - and
scared. "I'm not going to let you do it alone. I don't
want anyone else - I don't want you to get hurt."
Ada stared at him, not sure what to say. Now that
Bertolucci was dead, she didn't want to have to ditch
Leon in the sewers; it wouldn't be hard, considering
how extensive the system was . . . but he was just so
goddamn nice, so determined to be helpful, that she
was starting to - to not want to have to do anything
bad to him. Things would be a lot easier if he was just
some asshole on a machismo kick. . .
Okay, so blow your cover. Tell him you're a private
agent working to steal the G-Virus, and you don't want
company; tell him about the relief you felt when you
realized the reporter was about to die, or how you don't
have a problem with killing, if it's for a good cause
like getting paid. See how nice and helpful he is after
that.
Not an option; neither was trying to talk him out of
coming along, it wouldn't make sense. And there was
some part of her, some part that she didn't want to
admit to, that wanted very much not to be alone.
Seeing that thing that had popped out of Bertolucci
had shaken her, it had left her feeling that she wasn't
as invulnerable as she liked to think.
So let him come, get to the lab and find a safe place
to leave him there. No harm, no foul.
Leon was watching her closely, studying her - waiting
for her approval.
"Let's go," she said, and the grin he gave her,
though winning, made her feel even more uncomfortable.
Without another word, they walked toward the
kennel, Ada wondering what the hell she was doing
and whether or not she was still capable of doing
whatever it took to get the job done.
Claire stood in front of a medieval door at the very
end of the dark, dungeon-like hallway that the elevator
had taken her to. The station had been chilly, but
the icy damp of this stone hall made the station seem
like summer; it was like she'd descended into some
ancient, haunted castle straight out of the Middle
Ages.
She took a deep breath, trying to decide how to go
in; she was pretty sure that Irons wouldn't appreciate
a surprise visit, but the idea of knocking seemed
ludicrous - not to mention dangerous. There were
torches burning in sconces on either side of the heavy
wood door, the door itself belted with strips of rusting
metal and if she'd had any doubt before that Irons
was crazy, the sight of the twin sputtering torches and
the feel of cold, quiet dread that suffused the corridor
itself had wiped her uncertainty out.
A secret tunnel, a hidden room complete with moodlighting
. . . what sane person would want to hang out
down here? It wasn't the disaster that did it - Irons
must have been nuts way before the Umbrella accident
. . .
Another certainty, although she didn't have any
proof - but when Sherry had told her about what her
parents did for a living, and what had happened just
prior to her coming to the station, something had
clicked. Umbrella worked with diseases, and the
population of Raccoon had definitely come down
with a bad case of something. There must have been
some kind of an accident, a spill that had released the
strange zombie plague. . .
Quit stalling.
Claire bit at her lip, not sure what she should do.
She didn't doubt that Irons was down here somewhere,
and she did not want to run into him again;
maybe she should go back up, get Sherry, and try to
find another way out. Just because the area was secret
didn't mean that it was some kind of an escape route.
Still stalling, and Sherry is up there by herself. And
you've got a gun, remember?
A gun with very little ammo. If this was Irons's
hidden lair, maybe he kept weapons inside ... or
maybe it was just another corridor, one that led even
deeper into the bowels of the station. Either way,
wondering about it was telling her exactly jack shit.
Claire put her hand on the latch, took another deep
breath, and pushed it open, the heavy door swinging
in slowly on well-oiled hinges. She stepped back,
pointing the handgun...
Jesus.
An empty room, as dank and unwelcoming as the
corridor, but with furnishings and a decor that made
her skin crawl. A single naked bulb hung down from
the ceiling, illuminating the creepiest chamber she'd
ever seen. There was a table in the middle of the
room, stained and battered, a hacksaw and other
cutting utensils scattered on top; a dented metal
bucket and a mop, slopped against one water-stained
wall, next to a portable basin with dried red patches
inside; shelves, laden with dusty bottles - and what
looked like human bones, polished and pale, set out
like macabre trophies. That, and the smell - a thick
chemical reek, sharp and acidic, that only just covered
a darker smell. A smell like insanity.
Even looking into the room made her want to be
sick; "nuts" was maybe the understatement of the
year for the police chief, but there was nobody
home, and that meant that there could be another
secret passage somewhere inside. At the very least, she
had to check for weapons.
Swallowing, Claire stepped into the room, glad that
she hadn't brought Sherry with her; looking at the
private little torture chamber was going to give her
nightmares, it was nothing to expose a child to...
"Freeze, little girl, or I'll shoot you where you
stand."
Claire froze. Every muscle in her body froze as
Irons started to laugh from behind her, from behind
the door where she hadn't thought to look.
Oh my God, oh, God, oh, Sherry I'm so sorry...
Irons's deep chuckle rose into the hearty, gleeful
laughter of a madman, and Claire understood that she
was going to die.
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