Ada was gone.
“—has been activated. This auto-destruct sequence—“
“Shut up, shut up—“ Leon hissed, standing help-lessly in the middle of the room, his stomach knotted, his hands balled into fists.
When she’d heard the alarm, she must have pan-icked and run. She was probably stumbling through the giant facility, lost and dazed, maybe looking for him as that infernally calm voice repeated, as the sirens blared and rang.
The transport lift!
Leon turned and ran back through the door—and saw that it was gone, a large empty hole a few feet deep where it had been. He’d been too intent on getting to Ada, he hadn’t even noticed that it wasn’t
• we have to find that tunnel, we have to! Without the lift, we’re trapped here!
With a silent howl of frustration, Leon turned and ran back toward the catwalks, praying that he would find her before it was too late.
The crawl space ended abruptly, stopping over at least a seven-foot drop to an empty tunnel. Her ears ringing, her mouth dry as dust, Sherry grabbed the edges of the square hole, closed her eyes, and jumped. She swung out over the hall and let go as soon as she was straight up and down, landing crooked and falling as her right leg crumpled. It hurt, but she hardly felt it, scrambling on hands and knees to get out of the way, staring up at the hole—
• and there was Claire, her head coming out, her wide, worried eyes taking in that she was okay, that the hall was empty and safe . . . except that there were bells ringing and a woman on an intercom was talking, and Mr. X was coming.
Claire stretched her arm down as far as she could with the gun. “Sherry, I need you to hold this, I can’t turn around.”
Sherry stood and reached up, grabbing the barrel, amazed at how heavy the gun was as Claire let go. “Don’t point it at anything,” Claire breathed, and then she actually dove out of the hole, curling her body and landing on her shoulder, her head tucked in tight. She did a half-somersault and then her legs banged into the concrete wall.
Before Sherry could even ask if she was all right, Claire was on her feet, taking the gun and pointing to the door at the end of the hall.
“Run!” she said, and started to run herself, one hand pushing on Sherry’s back as they sprinted for the door, as the intercom voice told them to get out, told them that a self-destruct sequence had been activated—
• and behind them, a sound of crashing metal tore through the blaring noise of the sirens, and Sherry ran faster, terrified.
TwEnfY-EiGHT
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—
“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!”
* <sup>1</sup> *
“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.