THIRTY
BAM!
Sherry felt the train rock violently all around her.
Claire!
She ran to the door, remembering that Claire said
not to leave and not caring; she didn't know what it
was or what she could do to help, but she couldn't just
stand there...
BAM!
... and the car shifted again, another loud, banging
crash blasting through the stale air, the floor trembling
beneath her feet. Sherry reached the door and
hit the open switch, her heart hammering, sweat
dribbling through the dirt on her face.
The door slid open and there was Claire, pointing
her gun at something Sherry couldn't see, something
at the back of the car.
Claire's gaze flickered to her, and her shouted
words quaked with fear and panic.
"Don't come out! Shut the door!"
Sherry reached for the controls and hesitated, terrified
for Claire, wanting to see what it was -
- quick look -
- and she darted her head out, just for a second,
searching for the source of Claire's fear, for whatever
was slamming into the train car. A smell like chemicals
and burnt meat had filled the dimly lit platform,
coming from...
Sherry screamed when she saw it, when she saw the
tattered, charred monster that was rocking the subway,
just past a wall of metal bars. She saw its giant
fist pound the steel wall of the train, but it was the
monster's face that she couldn't look away from.
Mr.X.
The skin was burnt away from his face, from his
whole body. Smoke drifted up from the blackened,
melted lump of his skull, but the eyes were still
alive - red and black and steaming with acrid smoke,
but still very much alive.
"Sherry! Do it, now!" Claire screamed, not taking
her gaze from the smoking monster, from its terrible,
giant body coated with red, metallic muscle, as red
and burnt as its awful eyes.
Sherry hit the controls, the door closing as Claire
started to fire.
The elevator did go down, though not as Leon had
expected, and not nearly as fast as he needed it to go.
The wide platform slipped down an angled tunnel,
like a slide, neon gridwork on black walls humming
past. Slowly.
"... now forty seconds to reach minimum safe
distance."
"Go go go..." Leon breathed, every ache and pain
in his body forgotten in the rising dread that beat at
his brain. The voice had stopped telling him to report
to the bottom platform, now only making announcements
in ten-second increments. As much as he
loathed the repeated instructions, it was much worse
not hearing them; the silences between the statements
were telling him not to bother trying.
To make it this far and then die because of a slow
elevator... He couldn't accept that. He'd been
through too much. The car crash, Claire, the running
and the monsters and Ada and Birkin - he had to
make it, or it was all for nothing.
There didn't seem to be a real floor beneath the
descending platform, or he would've tried it on
foot, but the lift seemed to be lowering by grooves
cut into either side of the darkness, by some mechanism
that he couldn't begin to guess at.
"... twenty seconds to reach ..."
Leon started to shake, the tension running through
his muscles, tightening them, making it hard to
breathe. What was safe distance? When that cool,
inhuman voice reached zero, how long before the
explosion?
Full throttle, she said full throttle...
The train would have to be fast. And he had ten
seconds left to get to it, as the strange elevator
continued its smooth, unhurried trek down into the
dark.
The door slid shut and Sherry was safe. For the
moment. Claire's thoughts had kicked into overdrive,
spinning through her limited options in a flash.
Can't let him knock it off the tracks...
She knew she couldn't hope to injure the creature,
but she might be able to distract it long enough for
them to get away. She wished she'd bothered to show
Sherry the simple controls for the train, wished that
the train was already moving, taking Sherry to
safety -
- but I didn't and we have to go NOW.
The recorded message was counting down the final
ten seconds to reach a safe distance. As the smoking
remains of Mr. X dealt another hammering blow to
the dented subway wall, Claire aimed for its mutant
head and fired.
Five shots, four of them smacking into the bizarre
material that made up its flesh, about where a human's
ear would be. The fifth went wide, and as the
explosive thunder echoed through the shadows of the
chill platform, the thing that she'd dubbed Mr. X
turned slowly toward her.
Now what?
The recorded female voice distracted her for a splitsecond,
as Mr. X took a single step toward her, a
lumbering, monstrous step that pulled it out of the
shadows.
". . . three. Two. One. Safe distance minimum now
required. Self-destruct will occur in five minutes.
There are now five minutes until detonation."
The alarms still blared, but at least the voice had
shut up. She wouldn't have noticed in any case, her
wide-eyed gaze fixed on the creature. It was hideous,
all the more so for its still humanoid shape, like a
mockery of reality, of sanity. In spite of the charred,
smoking patches that covered most of its body, its
unnatural flesh hadn't lost its elasticity; the reddish
matter beneath the burns flexed and contracted like
real muscle. It looked like a skinned giant that had
crawled from beneath a burning building - and if it
had suffered from its molten metal bath, she couldn't
see it. Another mighty step, and the arms rose, the
barred gate was ripped down, the iron bars were
crashing to the concrete.
Slow at least, at least there's still that...
It was the only thing she had going for her. Claire
sprinted for the subway door, still afraid, but the
smoking monster was slow, powerful but unable to
really move...
... and suddenly, Mr. X wasn't just walking anymore.
The creature bent at the waist, bent its knees
and pushed off the ground in a dynamic lunge
that tore gouges in the concrete, its deformed feet
propelling it toward her at a full run.
Claire didn't think. She dodged right and took off
past the hunched, loping monster, running as fast as
she could. It almost got her anyway, its reflexes faster
than fast - as if losing its facade of skin had freed it
somehow, the liauid metal oaring it down to its core
strength. As she leapt over the broken gate and into
the shadows, she heard the screech of not-flesh fingers
raking across the cement, saw that Mr. X had brought
one mighty arm up, slashing through the air where
she'd been only a second before. It meant to disembowel
her -
- but why, no G-Virus, no reason -
Claire ran deeper into the echoing darkness as the
intercom system calmly informed her that they had
four minutes left.
"There are now four minutes until detonation..."
Shit shit shit!
Just when he thought he might have a stroke from
the frustration, the elevator had finally stopped. Leon
jerked at the handle to a thick metal door, tensing
himself to run...
... and the door opened into one wall of a passage, a
sterile concrete corridor lit by flickering overhead
bars. And there were no signs telling him which way
to go.
Left or right?
The few seconds that he hesitated could cost him
his life - he still had any chance at all.
He'd heard once that when faced with a choice,
most people instinctively turned in the direction of
their dominant hand. With the crappy luck he'd had
throughout his long, long night in Raccoon, he decided
to go the other way.
Left. Leon ran, his boots pounding the floor, wondering
if he should even bother.
* * *
Not far past the broken gate, Claire saw a walkway
that crossed over the train, the stairs hidden by deep
shadow...
... and she heard the pounding of Mr. X behind as
it started after her, each running step a violent slap of
mutant flesh against cement. The terror drove her on,
her feet hardly touching the ground, not caring if she
ran head-on into a wall in the deepening dark. Maybe
that would be best, it was tremendously powerful, it
was fast, it was impossible to kill - she didn't stand a
chance if it caught her...
... and the steps were getting louder, faster, she
heard the ripping scrape of its clawed fingers plowing
up concrete. She had maybe a second before that hand
tore into her...
... and she dodged right again, throwing herself into
a well of darkness just past the stairs. Mr. X flew past,
a mammoth, hulking blur, and she actually felt the
wind from his moving hand whisper against her leg as
she hit the cold floor.
Sharp pain shot up her arm, her elbow cracking
hard against the cement. She ignored it, jumping to
her feet, searching for the monster in the dark.
Can it see, does it see me?
Her hand found an angled wall to the right, cement
against her back and on the left. She was in the space
beneath the stairs, and she had no idea where the
impossibly silent X was; the shadows wouldn't help
her if it could see in the dark.
She ran her hands over the walls, found a switch
and punched it. The texture of shadow changed as
dim light filtered down from somewhere above and
she saw the monster less than fifty feet away just as it
turned, its thick red gaze scanning evenly across the
deserted platform...
... and finding her. Marking her. The only sound
was a soft crackling coming from its still-smoking
flesh - until it took a step for the stairwell, and
cement crunched beneath one purpled leg.
Six or seven shots left, get the eyes...
Claire stepped quickly out of the shadows and
raised Irons's gun, squeezing the trigger, backing
toward the stairs.
Bam-bam-bam...
... and X was positioning itself for another attack,
the bullets smashing into its melted face, two of them
ricocheting from the matter of its skull as it aligned to
her position.
... bam-bam...
She was at the stairs, sidling up a step, the rounds
useless, Mr. X starting its lurching run. It would be on
her before she could turn, before she could get up the
steps.
- I'll die -
- but at least I'll hurt it first -
Mr. X took one - two powerful strides, halving the
distance between them as Claire aimed, determined
to make the last shots count. She would die, and her
only regret was for Sherry, her only wish that she
would be able to incapacitate the nightmare X before
it killed her.
She fired, and the monster's left eye exploded, a
burst of inky fluid splattering its wretched, inhuman
face.
Yes!
Mr. X veered to its right, not stopping but not
coming straight at her anymore - it would still hit the
base of the stairs - too close! - she had to try for the
other eye and she had about two seconds left...
Claire aimed, found her mark, and...
... click!...
... there were no bullets left, and the monster was
slamming into the base of the steps, the smell of
roasted meat washing over her as it raised its giant
hand up, and its giant, terrible body was all she could
see.
Claire rolled down the concrete stairs, hunching
herself into a ball and screamed
as Mr. X's ragged clawed fingers
raked across her left thigh, and a distant voice told her
that they had three minutes left.
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