PROLOGUE
FACED WITH HIS IMMEDIATE DEATH, SURROUNDED
by the diseased and dying as pieces of flaming
helicopter rained down from the skies, all Rodrigo Juan
Raval could think about was the girl. That, and getting
the hell out of the way.
She'll die too -
- move!
He dove for cover behind an unmarked tombstone as
the small cemetery rumbled and shook. With a shattering
metal sound of high impact, a massive chunk of
smoking 'copter crashed into the far corner of the yard,
spraying the nearest rotting prisoners and soldiers with
burning fuel. Bright, oily streamers of it spattered across
the ground like sticky lava -
- and when Rodrigo hit the dirt, he felt a tremendous
bolt of pain in his gut, two of his ribs cracking against a
weed-buried slab of dark marble. The pain was sudden
and terrible, paralyzing, but he somehow managed not
to pass out. He couldn't afford to.
A rotor blade knifed into the dirt barely two feet from
him, spraying sandy earth into the evening sky. He heard a
new chorus of wordless moans, the virus carriers protesting
the rain of fire. An infected guard shambled by, his
hair blazing like a torch, his eyes sightless and searching.
They don't feel it, don't feel a thing, Rodrigo desperately
reminded himself, concentrating on his breathing,
afraid to move as the pain edged from shrieking to mere
shouting. Not human anymore.
The air was thick with dizzying fumes and the smells
of rapid decay and burning meat. He heard a few gunshots
somewhere else in the prison compound, but only
a few; the battle was over, and they had all lost. Rodrigo
closed his eyes for as long as he dared, fairly certain that
he would never see another sunrise. Talk about having a
crappy day.
It had all started only ten days before, in Paris. The
Redfield girl had infiltrated HQ Admin, and had put
up one hell of a vicious fight before Rodrigo himself
had gotten the draw on her. The truth was, he'd been
lucky - she'd pulled her piece and come up empty.
Yeah, real lucky, he thought bitterly. If he'd known
what the immediate future was going to hold, he might
have reloaded for her.
The reward for catching her alive, a chance to take his
elite security unit through their paces with real, living
viral carriers out at the Rockfort facility, the compound
on a remote island in the Southern Atlantic. The girl
would end up a new test subject for the scientists, or
maybe bait for her troublesome brother and his hayseed
S.T.A.R.S. rebellion Rodrigo kept hearing rumors
about. Seventeen people had been seriously injured by
Redfield's dance through HQ Admin, five more dead.
Most of them were sleazy suits, Rodrigo hadn't given a
half shit about any of them, but catching the girl meant
he could look forward to a serious pay hike. Umbrella
could turn her into a giant neon cockroach for all he
cared, they'd certainly done worse.
Lucky again, it seemed. He had ten days to ready his
troops, ten days while the HQ interrogators unsuccessfully
questioned the girl. The journey from Paris to Capetown
to Rockfort had been cake - the pilots were all top-notch
and the girl had wisely kept her trap shut. All of his men
had been psyched for the opportunity, the mood high as
they touched down and started to prep for the first drills.
And then, less than eight hours after reaching the island
- only the second time he'd ever been there - the
compound had been brutally attacked by persons unknown,
a precision air strike from out of the blue. Corporate
financing, definitely, razor technology and seemingly
unlimited supplies of ammo - the 'copters and
planes had rolled overhead like a thundering black
nightmare, the attack well-planned and merciless. As far
as he could tell, everything was hit - the prison, the
labs, the training facility... He thought the Ashford
house might have been spared, but he wouldn't bet on it.
The strike was devastating enough, but it was almost
immediately trumped by what came next - the destroyed
hot zone lab leaked out a half dozen variations
on the T-virus, and a number of experimental BOWs,
bio-organics, had escaped. The T series turned humans
into brain-fried cannibals, an unfortunate side effect, but
it hadn't been created for people. Through the questionable
miracles of modern science, most of the new
weapon subjects weren't even remotely human, and the
virus turned them into killing machines.
Chaos had ensued. The base commander, that creepy
maniac Alfred Ashford, hadn't done a damned thing to
organize, so it had been up to the ranking soldiers to
lead. The prisoners were obviously useless but there had
been enough grunts on the ground to launch a tremendously
unsuccessful defense and counterattack; his own
boys had fallen as quickly as the rest of them, wiped out
on their way to the heliport by a trio of OR1s, the current
T-virus breed of choice.
All that training lost in just a minute or two. The OR1s
were particularly nasty, violently aggressive and extremely
powerful. Fortunately, only a few of those had escaped
... but then, a few was all it took. Bandersnatches,
the grunts called them, because of the long reach. Funny,
that his team had been so careful to avoid infection, donning
custom filter masks even as the first bombs hit - and
yet they were taken out by a form of the virus, anyway.
At least it was over fast, before they even knew how
much trouble they were in, he thought, envying them
their hope, He hurt, he was exhausted, and he'd seen
things that he knew would haunt him for the rest of his
life, however long that might turn out to be. They were
the lucky ones.
Rockfort had become a hell on Earth. The man-made
virus was a short-lived airborne and had dispersed
quickly, only infecting about half the island's population
... but the new carriers had promptly chomped
down on most of the other half, spreading the disease.
Some had escaped early on, but between the infected
and the freed BOWs, getting out had become a bleak
option. The entire island was overrun.
Maybe that's the way it should be. Maybe we all got
what we deserved.
Rodrigo knew he wasn't an evil man, but he didn't kid
himself, he wasn't exactly one of the good guys, either.
He'd turned a blind eye to some very bad shit in exchange
for some very good pay, and as much as he'd like to shift
the blame around, he couldn't deny his own small part in
the apocalypse that now surrounded him. Umbrella had
been playing with foe ... but even after Raccoon City
had gone down, even after the disasters at Caliban Cove
and the underground facility, he'd never really considered
that something might happen to him or his team.
Another walking corpse wandered past his temporary
shelter, a reasonably fresh shotgun blast where his jaw
should have been. Rodrigo instinctively ducked lower
and again had to struggle not to pass out, the fresh pain
shockingly intense. He'd broken ribs before; this was
something else, something internal. Liver laceration,
maybe, a sure killer if he didn't get help. Assuming his
amazingly bad luck streak held up, he'd bleed out internally
before something ate him ...
His thoughts were wandering, the pain had gone deep
and as much as he wanted to rest, there was the girl, he
couldn't forget about her. He was close now, so close.
One of the guards had knocked her unconscious before
she got her physical exam or prison issue, and that had
been just before the attack. She should still be in the isolation
cell, the underground entrance just past the flaming
helicopter debris.
Almost finished now, then I can rest.
Most of the barely-human virus carriers had moved
away from the fiery crash, following some primal instinct,
perhaps. He'd lost his weapon somewhere along
the way, but if he ran behind the standing headstones at
the west wall...
Rodrigo eased himself into a sitting position, the pain
getting worse, making him feel nauseous and weak. There
should be a bottle of hemostatic liquid in the holding
area's first aid kit, which would at least slow any internal
hemorrhaging - although he thought he was prepared to
accept death, as much as anyone could be prepared.
But not until I get to the girl. I captured her, I brought
her here. My fault, and if I die, she dies, too.
In spite of all the horror he'd witnessed that day, the
comrades he'd lost and the constant, gnawing terror of
suffering a truly ghastly death, he couldn't stop thinking
about her. Claire Redfield had blood on her hands, true,
but not on purpose, not like Umbrella. Not like him. She
hadn't killed for greed, she hadn't made him disregard
his own conscience for all those years ... and having
watched his elite team turned into spaghetti by honest to
God monsters, having spent the afternoon fighting for
his life, it had become clear that trying to bring Umbrella
to justice was what good guys did. The girl deserved
something for that, even if only not to die alone
and in the dark. And it just so happened that he had a set
of keys taken from the dead warden's belt loop, one of
which would surely fit her cell door.
Sparks flurried up into the darkening sky from the
flaming wreckage, tiny bright insects bursting into nothing,
occasionally falling on one of the closer zombies
and sizzling into their gray flesh before dying out. They
didn't care. Rodrigo gritted his teeth and stumbled to his
feet, aware that the young Claire probably wouldn't last
ten minutes on her own, knowing that he meant to give
her the chance. It wasn't the least he could do; it was
simply the only thing left.
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