City Of The Dead

Annette birkin crawled out from beneath the crushing weight of the cold metal, still holding the gun, the G-Virus gone. As she opened her mouth to scream her fury, to rail to the Gods at the injustice of her terrible plight, blood dribbled out across her lips in a thick streamer of clotted drool.

- mine mine mine -

Somehow, she made it to her feet.

Ada told herself that she didn't deserve Leon Ken-nedy's good opinion anyway. She'd never deserved it.

Forgive me...

As he ran back across the catwalk from the trans- port bay area and swung west, running blind with fear for her, she stepped out of the hub's shadows and pointed the Beretta at his back.

"Leon!"

He spun around, and Ada felt her throat lock at the relief that spread across his face and struggled not to feel anything more as the joy turned sour, his grin fading.

Oh, Jesus, forgive me! "I've been waiting for you," she said, and felt no pride at how smooth and steady her voice sounded. How very cold. The alarms blared, the mechanical voice almost as icy as hers, telling them that the fail-safe couldn't be shut down. She didn't have time to let him get used to the idea, that she was as much a monster as the Birkin-thing or one of the soulless zombies. "The G-Virus," she said. "Give it to me." Leon didn't move. "She was telling the truth," he said, no anger but more pain than Ada wanted to hear. "You work for Umbrella." Ada shook her head. "No. Who I work for is no concern of yours. I... I..."

For the first time in years, since she'd been a very young girl, Ada felt the sting of tears and suddenly she hated him for that, for making her hate herself. "I tried!" she wailed, her composure blown by the fierce torrent of anger that coursed through her. "I tried to leave you, back in the factory! And you had to take it from Birkin, didn't you, you couldn't just leave it alone!"

She saw pity on his face, and felt the fury pass, swept away on a wave of sorrow for what she'd lost, with him; for the part of herself she'd lost a long, long time ago. She wanted to tell him about Trent. About the missions in Europe and Japan, about how she'd become what she was, about every event in her miserable, successful life that had brought her to this place - holding a weapon on a man who'd saved her. A man she might have cared about, in a different time and place. The clock was ticking. "Hand it over," she said. "Don't make me kill you." Leon stared into her eyes, and said, simply, "No." A second gone, then another. Ada lowered the Beretta. Leon steeled himself for the shot, for the bullet from Ada's gun that would kill him...... and she slowly lowered the weapon, her shoul- ders sagging, a tear running down one porcelain cheek. Leon blew out his held breath, feeling too many things, a jumble of sadness and betrayal - and pity, for the tortured struggle in her beautiful dark gaze and a shot rang out from the shadows behind her. Ada's eyes went wide, her mouth falling open as she pitched forward, the gun hitting the floor, her body hitting the rail and flipping over.

"Ada, no!"

He ran and dove, and somehow she caught the rail as he grabbed her wrist, her body dangling over the bottomless dark, blood spouting from her hanging, shattered shoulder.

"Ada, hold on!"

* * * "Mine," Annette whispered. She raised the handgun again, intending to shoot the other, to take back what was hers, to make them all pay...... and the gun was too heavy, it was falling, and she was falling with it. Together, they fell to the dark metal, the dark, the dark spinning up into her mind and finally taking her pain away.

William...

It was her very last thought before she went to sleep.

The door opened into a room filled with screaming machines, the howls and hisses of the humming, rattling giants drowning out the shrill call of the alarm warning. Claire ran, pulling and pushing Sherry along, look- ing desperately for a way out, knowing that the monster was close.

What does he want, why us?

There, a platform in the corner some six feet off the floor, a stack of crates pushed to one side just be-neath it. "This way!" Claire screamed, and they ran, past the rows of shuddering metal consoles, heat pouring from the machines as Claire pushed Sherry up and then climbed after her. Crash! She turned, saw that the massive creature was ripping through the door across the room, striding into the screaming heat and searching, searching... At the end of the platform, a double metal hatch. They dashed for it, Claire not thinking of anything but how to get away, how to destroy a thing that had survived all that it had...... the door was unlocked, and they ran onto anoth- er platform; the heat in the shadowy chamber was searing, terrible...... and a dead end. Claire saw that before they'd taken a half-dozen running strides into the massive room. They were on the overseer's platform in a foundry, the boiling heat rising up from the heavy smelting vats below. She had twelve bullets, split between two guns. Claire stumbled to the edge of the platform, Sherry next to her, the electric orange of the molten metal bathing them in its fevered glow. Hot enough to burn anything...

How? How do I make him jump? "Sherry, go over there!"

She pointed to the farthest corner of the platform, and Sherry shook her head, her small face trembling with fear. "Do it! Now!" Claire shouted, and with a cry of terror, Sherry ran, her locket banging against the open flaps of the denim vest -

- not a locket -

- and Sherry screamed, and Claire turned, and Mr. X was coming.

He walked into the chamber, as stiff and huge and impossible as when she'd first seen him, the eerie orange light turning him into even more of a night- mare. Claire stood her ground, jamming Irons's gun into her shorts, the half-formed plan running through her frightened mind. It probably wouldn't work but she had to try -

-he reaches for me, I jump over the railing, I grab on, he falls -

Mr. X turned his blank gaze toward her as he took his floor-shaking, measured steps, the black bullet holes in his face and throat just pockets of shadow in the smooth, terrible pumpkin light...... and he turned toward Sherry, and raised his fists, and started for her. "Hey! Hey, I'm here!" Claire screamed, and he didn't hear her, didn't see her, his entire monstrous being focused on the cowering, sobbing girl huddled against the far wall, clutching her locket...... and Claire knew what he wanted. The half remembered phrases from both Sherry and Annette came together in a flash of awareness, forming the answer.

G-Virus, rip her apart, good luck charm.

Not a locket.

"Sherry, he wants the necklace! Throw it to me!"

If she was wrong, they were both dead. Mr. X closed in on the girl, blocking her from Claire's view...... and the pendant, the G-Virus pendant that An-nette Birkin had inflicted on her young daughter came flying through the heated dark, hitting the floor in front of Claire's feet. Mr. X reeled around, following the path of the thrown pendant with his black eyes, forgetting Sherry the second the necklace left her grasp. It was true.

Good girl!

Claire scooped it up, waving it at the monster, feeling a rush of incredible anger and malicious glee as the bloated giant started toward her with unwaver-ing intent, fists raising again, his lifeless features fixed on the glittering pendant. "You want this?" Claire taunted, the words spilling out of the fury, for the wasted bullets, for the fear that she and Sherry had suffered. "Yeah? Then come and get it, you miserable, mindless freak!"

The monster was less than five feet away when Claire turned and threw it into the bubbling, burning hot pool, the necklace disappearing into the melted iron...... and the superman creature that had terrorized them throughout the endless night walked straight into the rail, the metal bars snapping in his all- powerful wake...... and plunged silently into the giant vat, a great wave of sizzling metal sloshing over the blackened sides, spontaneous eruptions of flame dancing up from the dark shape of his body as he disappeared beneath the surface of the molten lake. Triumph, sweet and wonderful - and then the cool voice of the recording changed suddenly, wiping away the joy of seeing Mr. X take a lava bath. Over the shrill blasts of the mechanical sirens.

"There are five minutes to reach minimum safe distance. All remaining personnel should evacuate immediately. Please report to the bottom platform. Repeat, please report to the bottom platform. Re-peat..."

Sherry was at her side, and Claire grabbed her hand, and they ran.

The pain was incredible, and Ada closed her eyes, wondering if she would die from it.

"Ada, hang on! Just hang on, I'll pull you up!"

Through the throbbing, pounding sirens that as-saulted her ears, Ada heard the countdown for the fail-safe start to run. Five minutes.

He tries to save me, we both die.

Leon's grip was strong, the determination in his panicked, pleading voice almost as strong as her own will. Almost, but not quite. Ada turned her face up to his, saw that in spite of it all, he still wanted her to survive, he wanted to help her up and carry her away to the safety of escape.

Not this time. Not for me...

Her life had been about selfishness, about ego and greed. She'd seen a lot of good people die, and somewhere along the way, she'd lost the ability to care - telling herself that even the effort was a waste of time and a sign of weakness.

And I was wrong, I was selfish and wrong and now it's too late.

Not too late. Whatever waited beneath her, the decision was made. "Leon, go down, west, and find the cargo room, past the row of plastic chairs. You'll need the disk, it's in my... pouch..."

"Ada, I have it! Cargo disk, right, I have it, I found it - don't talk, just hold on, let me help you!" He fumbled at the rail, trying to maintain his grip. Talking was a horrible effort, but she had to finish, had to tell him before time ran out.

"The code is 345. Get to the elevator, Leon. Take it down. The subway tunnel leads out. Have to run full throttle... and watch out for Birkin, the G-carrier, he... he's changing by now. Got it?"

Leon nodded, his blazing blue eyes filling her up. "Live," she said, and it was a good word, a word to go out on. She was tired, and the mission was wrapped, and Leon would live. She let go of the railing, and Leon screamed her name, and the sound of it followed her down into the dark like a bittersweet good-bye.