ResidentEvil-Nemesis [Chapter: 20]

TWENTY

TIME PASSING. DARK AND DARK, AND FRAGMENTS

of a thousand dreams, spinning into focus for a

brief glimpse before spinning away. She was a child at

the beach with her father, the taste of salt on the wind.

She was a gawky teenager, in love for the first time; a

thief, stealing from wealthy strangers as her father had

taught her to do; a student, training for the S.T.A.R.S.,

learning to apply her skills to help people.

Darker. The day her father went to prison for grand

larceny. Lovers she had betrayed, or who had betrayed

her. Feelings of loneliness. And her life in Raccoon

City, the very death of light.

Becky and Priscilla McGee, ages seven and nine, the

first victims. Eviscerated, parts of them eaten. Finding

the crashed Bravo team helicopter outside of the mansion;

the smell inside, of dust and rot. Learning about

Umbrella's conspiracy and the corruption and collaboration

of at least a few S.T.A.R.S. members. The death

of the traitorous team leader, Albert Wesker, and the

Nemesis's final attack.

Several times, half awake, she swallowed cool water

and then slept again, more recent memories taking

over. The lost survivors, the people she'd tried to save,

the faces of the children, mostly. All of them, gone.

Brad Vickers's brutal death. Carlos. Nicholai's flat,

emotionless gaze, and Mikhail's sacrifice. And reigning

over it all like the demonic epitome of evil, the beyond

Tyrant monster, the Nemesis, its terrible voice calling

for her, its terrible eyes seeking her wherever she went,

whatever she did.

The most troubling thing, though, was that there was

something happening to her - a distant feeling, because

it was happening to her body and she was very much

asleep, but no less unpleasant for that. It felt like her

veins were heating up and expanding. Like her every

cell was becoming thick and heavy with strange spices,

sticking to the cells around it, all of them boiling

gently. Like her whole body was a vessel filled with

moving wet heat.

Finally, the gentle sound of falling rain lapped at the

edges of her awareness and she yearned to see it, feel

its coolness on her skin, but it was a long, tiring struggle

to leave the dark behind. Her body didn't want to,

protesting louder the closer she got to the surface of

gray, the twilight between the dreams and the rain, but

determined, she won out.

After deciding that she was alive, Jill opened her eyes.