Nemesis

"NO, LISTEN, YOU GOTTA LISTEN -I DON'T know anything, you don't want to do this. They've had me doing reports on water and soil samples, that's it, I'm no threat to you! I swear!"

Foster was working himself into a froth, and Nicholai decided that making a man wait for his death, particularly such a sad little man, was cruel. The researcher was al-ready cowering in the corner, pressed against the door in the northeast corner of his office, his pinched, ratty fea-tures flushed and sweaty. It had taken Nicholai less than five minutes to find him once he'd reached the facility. "... and I'll just leave, okay?" Foster was still bab-bling. "I'll be gone and you'll never hear from me again, swear to God, why do you want to kill me, I'm nobody. Tell me what you want and I'll do it, whatever it is, talk to me, man, okay? Let's just talk, okay?"

Nicholai suddenly realized that he was just staring at Foster, as if he'd been lulled into a trance by the rise and fall of the man's hysteria. It had been an endless day in a series of them... but as much as he wanted to get out, to be done with the entire operation, Nicholai felt oddly compelled to say something.

"There's nothing personal in this, I'm sure you un-derstand," Nicholai said. "It's about money... or it was at the beginning, but things are different now." Foster nodded quickly, eyes wide. "Yeah, sure they are, different."

Now that he'd started, Nicholai found he couldn't stop. It suddenly seemed important for someone else to understand what he'd gone through, what he was still up against  - even if it was only someone like Foster.

"The money is still most of it, of course. But after I got here, after Wersbowski, I started to feel like I had come to a very special place. I felt... I felt that things were finally becoming the way they were supposed to be. The way my life should have been all along. Ex-treme circumstances, you see?"

Foster bobbed his head again but wisely said nothing.

"But then Carlos tricked me; he couldn't have died in the explosion, because Jill received the antidote. And I'm starting to think that she's the cause, that things changed because of her." As he spoke, he sensed the truth of it, as though a light was dawning in his mind's eye. It was true, talking helped.

"Even at the beginning, she ruined the setup I had with Carlos and Mikhail. Manipulative, controlling woman, there are a lot of them like that. She probably slept with both of them, too. Seduced them." "Bitches, all of 'em," Foster sincerely agreed. "Then she got sick and sent Carlos to steal the vac-cine. I'm not excusing his part in all of this, not at all, but there's something about her... it's like her pres-ence alters things, makes everything wrong somehow. I don't even think she's dead now. If a seeker can't kill her, a mutant certainly can't."

Nicholai stood silently, lost in thought for a moment. He'd never been a superstitious man, but things really were different. Jill Valentine was...

... a woman, she's just a woman and you 're not think-ing clearly, haven't been for days.

Nicholai blinked, and the thought was gone, and Foster was still in the corner, watching him with an ex-pression of cautious terror. As though he thought Nicholai was crazy. Nicholai felt a rush of hatred for the little man, for trying to trick him, telling him to talk and then judging him for it. He deserved to die, as much as any of them. "I'm not crazy," Nicholai shouted angrily, "and I'm done talking about this! You're the last one, after you it's over and that's just the way things are, so be a man and accept it! "

Three rounds, a burst of tat tat tat through one of Ter-ence Foster's pleading green eyes, and the researcher's head snapped back, blood splashing the door he leaned against, his body collapsing lifeless to the cold floor. Nicholai felt nothing. The last Watchdog, dead, and there was no sense of accomplishment, no feeling of conquest. Just another corpse on the floor in front of him and a deeply felt desire to get out of Raccoon, where things had gone so sour. Nicholai shook his head, his heart heavy, and started to search the office for Foster's data.

Jill stood in front of the narrow bridge that con-nected Memorial Park's back gate to the second floor of the Umbrella facility, suspended over what had to be a marsh or swamp, from the gassy-mud smell. It was too dark to tell by looking, but the odor was unmistak-able  - and so were the fresh bootprints that led from where she stood to the door on the opposite side. As she'd expected, Nicholai was here.

Wonderful. What a treat.

Nicholai aside, she was glad to have found the bridge; she'd been concerned that the park would turn out to be a dead end and that she'd have to backtrack. The bridge also conveniently led to the second floor; it made sense that the offices and control rooms  - hope-fully at least one of them would have a transmitter sys-tem  - would be on the second floor of the two-story building, the first floor being where the water treatment took place. Assuming Umbrella had bothered with a sensible layout, she should be able to get in and out easily enough. If there was no radio, she'd circle around to the front of the building's first floor and see about the roads. She carefully edged out onto the wood-and-metal span, breathing deeply, focusing herself as she reached for the low wood railing to steady herself. Dealing with Umbrella's creatures, bred or created, took skill and concentration, but facing a human adversary took more than that; people were much less predictable than ani-mals, and if she meant to keep away from Nicholai, she had to be as fully alert as possible, her intuition and awareness jacked up to feel an oncoming attack like now.

Jill froze halfway across the bridge, feeling for the Beretta's safety with her thumb, something was very wrong but she couldn't tell... Ka thud! Behind her. Jill spun, heart racing, and saw the Nemesis stand-ing twenty feet away, its freakish body hideously transformed by fire and buckshot. Its chest and arms were bare, giving her a clear look at how the waving tentacles were attached, sprouting from its upper back and shoulders. Much of its skin had burned off, re-vealing fibrous red muscle tissue in patches of ashy black. "Starsss," it rumbled, limping forward a step, and she saw that much of its lower right side was mangled from where she'd hit it with the grenade gun. The flesh from the bottom of its rib cage to about midthigh looked like burned spaghetti, smashed and shredded, but she doubted very much that it felt pain, and she had few illusions about its strength being overly affected. In an instant, her adrenaline-pumped mind flashed through a hundred options and latched on to her best bet. The ledge at the clock tower. Carlos had pushed it right off, but it had been blinded, distracted this, freak!

She opened fire, aiming at the most obvious part of its deformed face, its improbably white teeth  - and saw at least two shots shatter through the eerie grin, pale splinters exploding out in a spray.

The S.T.A.R.S. killer howled, its flesh tentacles spreading like a cape behind it, framing the beast in a coiling, quivering sunburst.

- not in pain, maybe, but it feels something

- GO NOW!

Jill continued to fire as she ran for it, her instincts screaming at her to run the other way, her logic remind-ing her that she couldn't possibly run fast enough. The Nemesis was still howling when Jill smashed into it, pushing up and out to smack into its chest the way Carlos had, inwardly cringing at the feel of its skin against her palms, wet, gritty, cold and it staggered backwards, landing heavily at the very edge of the bridge, inches from empty space. Its weight and mass worked for Jill as she'd prayed it would, she could hear the explosive crack of the weath-ered board beneath its heels, the side rail crunching as the giant fell against the slats...... but two, three of the twisting tentacles were grab-bing at the undamaged railing on the other side, the reeling Nemesis putting its hands out, struggling to re-gain its balance. Jill jumped, twisting, knowing that she couldn't let it stand up again, and landed both feet against its ravaged abdomen, kicking off from the monster's body with all of her strength. She fell solidly to the wood planking, involuntarily crying out in pain as her wounded shoulder absorbed much of the impact, but the sight of those fleshy ropes, flailing at air as the Nemesis lost its grip and plunged over the side, did her a world of good... as did the murky, thunderous splash she heard a beat later. She stumbled to her feet and across the rest of the bridge, silently cheering as the door that led into the fa-cility swung open, unlocked. Inside, a short hall turned left fifteen feet ahead, all utilitarian metal grate floors and concrete walls. She quickly deadbolted the door behind her and sagged against it, pointing her weapon at the blind corner while she caught her breath. No footsteps outside or in, nothing but a faint me-chanical hum coming from somewhere deeper in the facility. When she could breathe almost normally again, she moved forward, anxious to get out before the Nemesis returned. She had to get out and call for help, or just get out; the Nemesis wasn't going to give up, and she couldn't hope to elude it forever. She edged further down the hall and saw that a metal shutter stood at the right end, facing the corridor she couldn't see. Another step forward, and she darted a look around the corner. Clear, another short hall that turned right. She stepped back and took a closer look at the metal shutter, the kind that opened with a key card. The room's name was just above the door, in black stencil: COMMUNICATIONS. Jill felt a rush of hope, then saw that there was no manual lock. The key card reader to the right of the shutter was the only way in. Frustrated, Jill turned away. Running into the Neme-sis had changed things. She could leave, get far away from it and Nicholai and try to come up with some-thing new, or she could continue on, search for the card and keep looking for other possibilities. Jill smiled wearily. Both options sounded terrible, actually, but the latter seemed to suck a little less. At least her clothes would have a chance to dry. Shivering, Jill started down the adjoining corridor, feeling vaguely envious of Carlos, warm and sleeping back at the chapel.

The Umbrella facility was a series of small single-level buildings and one large two-story one, set among several open areas that had been stacked high with crap piles of lumber, old cars, and scrap metal being the main competitors for space. If there were heli-copters on the site, Carlos thought they'd be behind one of the warehouses  - nearly impossible to get around, of course, unless he wanted to scale another stack of cars. Not unless I have to, thank you very much. His ear-lier climb had been enough to last him the rest of his life. He'd banged the hell out of both his knees when he'd come down hard on the cab of a flatbed truck, and he'd limped most of the rest of the way to the fa-cility. He stood in a small and crowded yard, which he'd hopped a fence to get to, memorizing the compound's sprawling layout as best he could before moving to-ward the main building. He wanted to make sure Jill was okay before he went hunting for a 'copter. As soon as he reached the building, Carlos broke the first win-dow he could reach with the M16's stock and boosted himself up. He sat on the frame, looking into a long, narrow, bunkerlike room, dimly lit and littered with bodies. To the right was a set of doors with an exit sign overhead, probably leading out to the main warehouse; he'd have to try the doors when he went for the helicopters. To his left, though, was a metal ladder that went straight up to a hatch in the ceiling. He couldn't have asked for more. Well, an elevator, maybe, he thought as he pulled himself through the window, his taped ribs protesting.

Although as long as I'm wishing, suddenly waking up and finding out this has all been a bad dream would be pretty nice, too.

The room smelled like blood and rot, a smell that he had gotten used to, he realized. It smelled like Rac-coon, and as he slowly climbed the ladder, he thought that he would die a happy man if he could just do it breathing fresh, untainted air. The square metal hatch at the top lifted easily, swinging up and back on hinges to lean against a three-sided railing. Carlos ascended carefully into another dim room with a bunker feel, lined with consoles and cabinets, no bodies... "Caramba," he breathed, stepping away from the ladder to the desk console against the front wall, set beneath large windows that looked out over the mostly dark yard. It was an old communications relay system, and even as he reached out to pick up the headset, a crackle of static hissed from a small speaker set into a side panel, followed by a woman's cool, clear voice.

"Attention. The Raccoon City project has been aban-doned. Political maneuvering to delay federal plans has failed. All personnel must evacuate immediately to out-side of the ten-mile blast radius. Missiles will be launched at daybreak. This message is being broadcast on all available channels, and will repeat in five min-utes."

Stunned, Carlos looked at his watch and felt his stomach knot. It was half past four in the morning, which left them an hour, maybe a little more. He snatched up the headset and started pushing but-tons. "Hello? Does anybody read me, I'm still in the city, hello?"

Nothing. Carlos ran for the door at the back of the room, his thoughts repeating in an endless loop, day-break, Jill, helicopter, daybreak, Jill and the door, a metal shutter, was firmly locked. No keyhole, no nothing. He couldn't get into the building.

And I don't even know if she's here, maybe she started back already, maybe...

Maybe a lot of things, and as much as he wanted to find her, if he didn't secure a way for them to escape the city, they weren't going to make it. He turned away from the door, not wanting to leave, knowing he didn't have a choice. He had to find one of those helicopters that Trent had told him about and make sure it was fueled up and working. Maybe he could buzz the facility, get her attention from outside, or find her on her way back to the clock tower. And if I can't... He didn't finish the thought, well aware of Jill's fate if he failed.Hardly noticing the pain in his side, Carlos ran forthe ladder, his heart pounding and filled with dread.