Hades Memoirs: Survivor

by enRAGEd

Rodrigo Juan Raval. As Rockfort falls and his men die around him, the last survivor tries desperately to save a life, just one, to atone for his sins. Pre/mid-RE:CV; cameo from Alfred Ashford.

Resident Evil: The Hades Memoirs

Rodrigo Juan Raval – Survivor

He didn't know who they were, but he knew one thing. They were good.

Something about the force that had attacked the Rockfort installation was eerily familiar. They moved like the more elite members of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasure Service, the unit he had belonged to ever since the company had freed him from the Cuban prison where he had been serving his life sentence. Their discipline, along with the tactics that they employed, reminded him of his own unit to no end, and their coordination suggested some kind of insight into the prison island's capabilities and routines. The assault they had launched smacked of inside knowledge, of some source that had betrayed their weaknesses and left them open to a raid that had cut to their very heart.

The only thing he couldn't understand was their motive. Unless they intended to free a specific prisoner or assassinate the base's commander, Alfred Ashford, who was surely the only person who thought himself worth assassinating given that Rockfort wasn't anywhere special, then there was little in that remote location for them. After all, there were other, more easily conquered laboratories that boasted much greater research and resources, and many more places where the corporation's private armies were built and maintained.

Unfortunately, the enemy's goal was not the most important thing on his mind at that moment. The bullet impacted hard with his side, the force of it spinning him and sending him toppling into a muddy crater. As he slid to a stop at the bottom of the hole, blood began to stream from the wound in his torso, soaking his shirt in scarlet. He lay for a few heartbeats, barely able to breathe as the agony made his entire body stiffen involuntarily, before he sagged, cupping his hands around the hole.

He was trembling and knew, with a soldier's instincts, that he was going into shock. Rain pelted his face and body, covering his top in small-grey dashes and occasionally lightening the spreading crimson stain on his torso. The pain was excruciating, a fire spreading through his stricken form that seized around his heart in a way that strangled the cries for help into silence in his throat. He was injured, alone and paralysed while his adversaries advanced on his position, intent on finishing him off. And if they didn't, then he would simply bleed to death.

That thought left him when a body, still very much alive, splashed into the hole he was occupying next to him. At that point in his life, the lean, handsome features of Sergeant Helena van Braun were probably the most beautiful he had ever seen in his life. Much like him, she was muddy and blooded, a trickle of scarlet issuing from her nostrils and a small laceration on her forehead, and her close-cropped hair was slick with rain water, matching her tattered clothes, but she was strong and authoritarian in his eyes, despite being his junior both in age and rank. She stood to return fire over the lip of their hiding place, before ducking back down beside him, her Kalashnikov assault rifle hanging on its strap from her shoulder. He couldn't begin to guess where his own weapon was.

"You dead, Chief?" she asked him, in her usual brisk manner. He was ashamed to admit that this was not the first time she had uttered those words to him upon coming to his aid. Keeping his hands clamped around the tear in his midriff, he shook his head. "Lemme see," she insisted, and allowed him to lift his gory digits at his own pace so that she could survey the damage, "looks bad. Keep the pressure on it; I'll worry about getting you out of here. Stay with me, Chief."

He mouthed silently, unable to force himself to speak, before settling simply to nod. Hefting her firearm, she poked her head out of the crater once again and sprayed the enemy ranks with fully-automatic fire. They both knew that it was unlikely she had hit any of their opponents, but she had hopefully at least convinced them to take cover. With that, she quickly tore a sleeve from her jacket and bunched it into his right hand to cover the injury, the dark green of the material quickly turning brown as it greedily drank its fill of his blood. She stooped and dragged him to his feet, letting him wrap his left arm around her bullish neck and easily supporting his weight with her masculine broadness. Once she had fastened her grip on him, she hauled him laboriously out of the ditch, cursing every time her hands and feet slipped in the wet dirt.

They made it half a dozen yards from the lip of the crater before they were forced into cover behind some fallen masonry, shaken loose by the bombing. Rodrigo found himself lying beside the bullet-riddled corpse of another of his subordinates, the arrogant sharpshooter, Derrick Crispin. His right eye socket was a torn hole where a pinpoint shot had burst his eyeball, though his torso was covered in so many other puncture wounds that it was impossible to tell which had killed him. The other glazed orb was staring at him even as he turned away to face Helena.

He watched as the female trooper levelled a hail of fire at the opposing force, allowing the stocky form of Ethan Trigg to crawl out of the foxhole he had been sheltering in and join them behind the shattered architecture. As a Corporal, the ape that was Trigg deferred to the blonde woman's rank, though as a chauvinist he did so with a scowl. For her part, Helena didn't seem to notice.

"Gotta get the Chief out of here," she told him, and the senior officer felt a sudden pang of concern when the larger male looked over to see his superior, paling when his eyes took in the injury he had sustained. Though occasionally a little dense, he was no less a consummate soldier and his reaction suggested the worst. "We got any medics out here?" she queried, flinching as a stray round sprayed concrete chips from the block that she was crouching behind.

People were fighting all around them, their battlefield a cacophony of unintelligible screams and the constant, ear-splitting rattle of automatic weapons, with the occasional flat thump of anti-personnel grenades making their own contribution intermittently.

"Last one was Haynes, and he bought the farm a while back," the uninjured man responded, his words sending Rodrigo's heart plummeting, "but we sent Benny down to the prison when the bombardment started and they haven't shelled that place yet. He might still be alive."

Gabriel Bennett, or "Benny" as he was affectionately known by the others, was the unit's conscientious objector, but also their very best field doctor. He didn't carry a weapon, even for self-defence purposes, which led to many of the more hardened troopers referring to him as a wimp. In spite of their taunts, he considered the oath he had taken to do no harm to be as paramount as his own life; more so, in fact, as he seemed willing to die for it. He had told his superior once before that, just because Umbrella was extorting him to gain his complicity in their morally bankrupt endeavours, it did not mean that he needed to contribute further to the murders committed by the company by causing them by his own hand.

His pacifist ways seemed to be a blessing in disguise considering that it had kept him alive through the war that they were fighting. Though they had a rudimentary grasp of First Aid, he suspected that neither Helena nor Trigg could tend his wound on their own, so it seemed that the medic might also save the life of his superior as well. Though he had always been curious, Rodrigo had never taken the time to ask the man about his life before the U.B.C.S, and reminded himself to do just that if they both lived through the battle.

"Alright, we're heading for the prison," the Sergeant asserted, altering her position to shoulder the weight of her commanding officer so that they were ready to move through cover towards the motor pool, "no point in holding this position and getting slaughtered, so give the order to fall back as soon as I've got the Chief ready to go, copy?"

"Copy that," her subordinate replied, clearly somewhat relieved. She barked the order for covering fire and Rodrigo dragged his feet under his bulk so that he could move with her, determined that he would not be more of a burden than necessary. The pain made it hard to coordinate himself, however, and he was light-headed with blood loss, almost as though his boots were not touching the sodden earth. After a moment, he immediately regretted trying to support his own weight.

"Fuck," she barked, inadvertently dropping him and allowing him to stagger drunkenly before slumping onto his side in the mud.

He groaned, wondering what had happened, but quickly realised when he saw the blonde collapse beside him, thickly-muscled arms holding the body of Ethan Trigg as he crashed to the floor. There was a circular, crimson teardrop beneath his eye where the bullet had entered his cheek and a corresponding exit wound the size of a fist at the back of his skull. He shot the body a regretful look, but knew that they hadn't a moment to waste. Propping himself up on his free hand, clutching his injury with the other, he tried to reach out for her and drag her back to their desperate retreat.

"Helena, we have to go," he croaked, his shock waning enough for him to get enough air in his lungs to speak. He was surprised by the feebleness of his voice and frustrated that he was being drowned out by the constant noise from all around.

Unfortunately, before he could attempt to snap her out of her reverie again, he found himself staring into the infrared goggles of one of the enemy soldiers. Yelling a wordless warning to his remaining colleague, he scrabbled in the dirt for a weapon of some kind as the opponent raised his own firearm to mow them both down. Before he could do so, however, there was the distinct, metallic crack of a bolt-action rifle and the man's concealed face vanished in a spray of scarlet mist. The event roused the blonde from her prone friend, and she seemed to note with both embarrassment and anger that her inattention had almost gotten them both killed, before she exchanged a glance with Rodrigo and turned to look in the direction of their seemingly serendipitous saving grace.

He did the same and saw a figure standing on the terrace of the building directly behind them, standing tall between the pillars that supported the overhanging roof. As he watched, the newcomer loosed a second shot from his antique rifle and then, with a studied fluidity guiding his movements, whirled into cover behind one of the vertical struts as machinegun fire peppered the stonework and shattered a window where he had been standing moments before. Even before the burst had died down, he whipped back into view on the other side of his hiding place and shot another high-velocity round into the fray. Though he did not know the man personally, the wounded male assumed from the old British regimental uniform, a crimson jacket with gold finery stitched to it, and exceptionally fair hair that this was none other than Alfred Ashford himself. His respect grew tenfold, though he was unsure whether the line of the other man's mouth was that of grim determination or a cruel and bloodthirsty smirk.

"The Boss is shit-hot, huh?" Helena asked, her voice somewhat awed.

"Yeah," her superior agreed, nodding as he swallowed down bile, the shivers of his subsiding shock making him feel as though he were going to vomit. Her eyes flicked down to his wound and then she shot him an apologetic glance, moving to drag him onto her shoulders once again. He struggled with her for a moment, tugging Trigg's sidearm out of its holster, determined that he would not be caught without a weapon again.

A hail of suppressing fire thundered from their side of the battlefield, a counteroffensive launched by the remaining soldiers who had rallied under Ashford's leadership, both from Rodrigo's unit and from the island's own security force, as well as its numerous trainees. The blonde hauled him quickly to the courtyard at the front of the motor pool, a location shielded by a wall that was still standing against all odds. There was a jeep abandoned on the tarmac at the front of the garages, and she wasted no time in aiding him into the passenger side of the vehicle before taking up a position in the driver's seat. Standing as tall as she dared over the windscreen, she surveyed the battle's meagre number of survivors.

"Regroup and fall back; the prison is the last line of defence!" she bellowed, her voice carrying even over the deafening sounds of the pitched fire fight, before sliding down into position behind the wheel and glancing at him as she fumbled for the keys in the ignition, "hold tight, Chief."

The tyres screamed on the surface beneath them before quickly finding purchase, the jeep rocketing into a tight circle as Helena pointed them in the direction of the rough trail that led to the prison. He was pleased to see others gathering at the doors to the garages, opening them with all haste so that they could pursue the two officers. Before the first of the other vehicles could be manned, however, the Sergeant had already sped them down the wide mountain path and out of sight. No longer distracted by the battle, he felt a tightening in his gut even through the dizzy haze that was settling and let out a groan.

"Don't you fucking die," his subordinate admonished, transforming her worry into anger as she had been trained, rage proving a far more useful emotion for a soldier such as her, "you're the survivor here, Chief. Hang in there; you'll outlive us all."

Of course, it had never been his intention to outlive any member of his team. Doing so was tantamount to failure for a leader, he had always believed. He had always done his best to put the lives of his subordinates first; it was a necessary tactic to ensure that he granted their well-being the same consideration that he did his own. He didn't want to fail, but he suspected that it may have already been too late.

Finding himself injured was not uncommon; it certainly wasn't the first time that she had been forced to remind him that he was a survivor. His body was criss-crossed with scars, old, long-healed wounds that had each felt like they would be the death of him at the time. If he had been the type then he might have described his current situation as just another day at the office, but for the casualties his unit had sustained. Each time he had been injured, his subordinates had come through for him. The knowledge that his cadre had been all-but obliterated hurt him more than his physical agony ever could.

The jeep lurched over an uneven patch of ground and his gorge rose for a second time. The sudden movement shook him back to reality just in time to hear the rumble of detonations from the cliff face above. His female colleague swore as she wrestled with the wheel, shooting constant, worried glances into the rear-view mirror. Turning his eyes upwards, Rodrigo muttered a curse of his own when he saw, with horror, that the explosions had dislodged several tons of rock from the top of the cliff overhead, which was now tumbling towards them.

The first boulders smashed apart the road behind them and he watched resignedly as the vehicle following their own was crushed along with its five passengers. Those driving the other vehicles that were not killed in the rockslide would be trapped between the debris and their unidentified attackers, forced into an undoubtedly fatal last stand. The tactics of their opposition were impressive and that was not good news for the ones defending the island.

The situation looked bleak; of the force that had been defending the buildings on the peak, only the two of them remained. The prison only had its guards to defend it, none of whom had been trained for open combat. It was doubtful that the handful of security personnel and trainees, who had been injured during the initial bombardment and taken back for treatment, would be able to tip the balance against the elite unit descending upon them.

They swerved onto the bridge that led to the front gate of their destination and Rodrigo's eyes widened when he realised that they were speeding towards a ragged gap in the crossing. He yelled out a strained warning and Helena wrenched the wheel around, spinning the jeep so that it would miss the chasm but losing control over the turn as the vehicle slid into the hole, where it lodged itself and refused to move any further. Slamming her fist on the dashboard in her frustration, she shifted gears into reverse and was about to put her foot down when her superior caught her arm with his free hand, dispelling the thought with a shake of his head. They were precariously perched and he did not want her attempts to dislodge the jeep to send them crashing into the bottom of the ravine below. If the rocks didn't kill them then the pounding surf certainly would.

She glanced over at him, eyes concerned as his grip loosened around her limb. The jolt felt as though it had scrambled his insides and he could feel a warm trickle across his torso, building at the waistband of his jeans. He was bleeding out. Worse yet, as she tried to lift him from his seat and carry him the remaining dozen yards to the gate, his vision started to swim. She grunted as she took his weight once again and began the arduous journey, as he could feel himself dying.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----

They set him down on a table in the guards' cafeteria, which had been turned into an impromptu triage unit for the treatment of those injured in the shelling. Though Bennett had done his best to make a hospital of the room, it was barely more sanitary than the squalid prisoners' mess hall. The moment his back was laid on the covered worktop, one of several that was being used as a bed for the numerous patients, he curled up into a foetal ball as anguish ripped through him, cutting through the haze that had previously obscured his focus.

The room was buzzing with activity as the guards and walking wounded did the best they could to aid the medic in the treatment of their colleagues. There was also a surprisingly high contingent of inmates running back and forth, shunting boxes and carrying various other pieces of equipment for their keepers. It seemed that a deal had been brokered with the detention centre's incarcerated population in exchange for their cooperation; it was most likely the result of a mutual need for survival. A redheaded boy, not even out of his teens, who had been given the unenviable task of mopping the blood, guts and vomit from the floor, constantly questioned the guards at every opportunity as to the whereabouts of his father, but none of them seemed to know or care. Even in his condition, Rodrigo could not help but wonder what someone so young could have done to find himself imprisoned there.

After a short while, Helena and one of the prison's staff members grappled his arms, pulling him straight so that he was flat on the surface. The medic appeared over him as two more individuals pinned his legs, slicing open his shirt with a pair of surgical scissors, before digging a pair of forceps into the hole in his torso to retrieve the bullet that was embedded there. It was agonising, but there was obviously no recourse, no sedative or analgesic to provide him with relief. By the time the tear had been stitched and patched with gauze, his body was wracked with pain and he was sweating profusely.

His head swam as he tried to take in the discussion between his subordinate and the warden as they spoke about the compound's defence. They made mention of locking mechanisms and important icons, but he was too exhausted to pay attention. Soon, the darkness that had been threatening to overtake him for some time swallowed him and delivered him into unconsciousness.

The sleep that he found waiting for him was hardly undisturbed, rather there was a clarity to his thoughts in the comatose state he'd slipped into that was a refreshing change from the sluggishness he'd felt while awake. Primarily, it was blind luck that had gotten his team caught up in the crossfire of Rockfort Island's defence, and not the good kind. In fact, they had nothing to do with the installation. In truth, they had only been present while transferring a prisoner captured at the company's regional headquarters in Paris. At first light, they had been scheduled to return to the European base.

It seemed that being in the wrong place at the wrong time was becoming a habit, as the unit had only been present to begin with because they were attending the debriefing for their last assignment. It had been pure chance that he had been there when the ragtag band of terrorists had attacked the head office, and fortune that he had been the one to apprehend the female that had brought them to the prison in the first place. The thought that their opponents might be there to liberate her did not seem viable though; the mysterious force was far too organised and well-equipped for that.

He thought of her, the one he had captured in Paris. From what they had gathered during the interrogations, her group was little more than a nuisance that Umbrella was well aware of. Their assault on the European headquarters had surprised everyone though, primarily because they shouldn't have had the resources to launch such an attack. Where they had gotten hold of the information needed, no one had been willing to say, but she had been different from the others that had been brought in. His unit had hit the group with a surgically precise incursion, but she had somehow managed to slip through the net. Thus began a cat-and-mouse chase through the complex that had ended with two fatalities and almost two dozen cases of severe burns.

But she hadn't been the one responsible for the deaths and, from what he had learned about her, she had not been there with intent to cause any. She claimed, and the testimony from the workers she had threatened backed her up, that she had been there exclusively to search for her missing brother. Knowing what he knew about the corporation, he almost didn't blame her for coming knocking at their door if she thought they had him. He wasn't sure she deserved imprisonment for that; in fact, he was almost certain that he would have done the same in her shoes.

He thought back to the days when he had first learned of the corporation's clandestine research and how horrifying it had all seemed before it ceased to matter, before his duty to the company had become all that was important. They had offered him a new lease of life in return for his services and he had accepted even before he knew the truth of what he was vowing to protect. Considering his mistreatment in his home nation, the beatings he had suffered to procure his "confession" and his wrongful imprisonment for crimes whose severity surprised even him during his trial, he considered his early release to be justice regardless of what he needed to do in order to procure it.

This woman was no different, a victim of a corrupt system bent on protecting itself from the ones who had come to know too much, not because they had asked or even searched for the truth, but because they had learned it regardless and could not ignore their responsibility. There was no justice for her.

The image of her face at the moment he had first seen her had burned into his mind. She was little more than a girl, but the look in her eyes was the same he had seen in those of children in the country of his birth. They were young eyes that had seen too much, aged prematurely by the visions they had glimpsed. He wondered what kind of life she had lived before Umbrella had changed everything, and what kind of life she could hope to have now that it had changed for good.

His recollection of her, with its smooth, slender features, suddenly gave way to the image of his blonde subordinate, her strong jaw and close-cropped hair replacing the more effeminate shapes of the other woman. It took him a moment to realise that his eyes were open and he was no longer unconscious.

"Come on, Chief, time to leave," she was saying, as she attempted to move him from the table he was resting on. In spite of his confusion, he did the best he could to assist her, though his body was rebellious and stubborn. His pain was beginning to resurface, but the light-headedness had not yet completely dissipated. "They're shelling again, but its not just bombs this time," she informed him, as they moved towards the cafeteria's doors, "they're dropping bodies too; infected right on top of us."

Even in his groggy state, he could hear the detonations from the artillery and, beneath the distant rumbles and explosions, the low, throaty groans of zombies, the noise of which made him shudder. He wondered if that had been their plan all along, to force them back into the cramped confines of the prison and then use the undead to eradicate them once they were trapped. The enemy were particularly well-equipped if they had access to Tyrant virus subjects, though it was possible that they had simply taken them from the labs. Worse yet was the idea that they had infected captives from the previous battle, or even the injured from their own side, for use against the survivors.

There were sounds of chaos from all around when they reached the open air, screams and gunfire echoing throughout the compound. The cool air of the damp evening, mixed with the light downpour, seemed to revive him somewhat and he managed to walk with a minimum of assistance, though Helena stayed close to him and steadied him with one arm.

"Where's the Redman girl being kept?" he asked her eventually, his words confusing her, "the girl we captured, where is she?"

"She's in the temporary lockup past the graveyard, still waiting to be transferred," she responded, clearly not sure why her superior was asking, "what's it to you, Chief?"

Rodrigo was silent for a moment; he did not enjoy the knowledge that he would have to pass through the island's cemetery to reach her. Its proximity to the interim holding cell was not a coincidence; he had been told that the guards delighted in using it to torment new inmates. He understood how such a place could be used to make others fear; burial grounds made him tense at the best of times, but the company performed experiments that ensured nothing ever stayed dead for long. It made them dangerous, as well as frightening. Still, it couldn't be helped.

"We need to let her out," he told her flatly, and her body tensed immediately with a thousand unspoken objections, all of which she was too professional to voice, "there's no sense in condemning her to die here with us; she didn't do anything to deserve that. There's no justice in this. If we got a second chance then so should she."

Helena was silent for a moment, but when she spoke she did not seem any less bemused. "Chief, are you sure about that?" she asked him, obviously wondering why his opinion of their enemy had changed so dramatically, "we've got enough shitheads running around this place already; do you really think we need another one?"

"She's not like them; she at least deserves a chance," he insisted, refusing to compromise on the virtuous mission he had set for himself. At this point, it was almost certain that he was going to die on Rockfort Island, but it didn't mean that she necessarily had to. By freeing her, he thought it might be possible for him to atone for what he had done in the past, in the name of his own freedom.

"You're the boss," she acknowledged, still sounding unconvinced, but willing to obey his orders even in the current situation.

He felt a pang of guilt then. She was an individual in her own right, he knew, and would have been perfectly entitled to make her own bid to escape. Instead, she had remained behind, even going so far as to wait for him while he recuperated in the makeshift infirmary. Now she was agreeing to follow an order that could only have seemed ridiculous to her. She trusted him, he realised, and the thought made him feel cold.

He wasn't sure if he could be the leader that she needed; he was weak with pain and blood loss, and he was endangering her life to pursue a goal that would salve his own guilty conscience. He had never done anything like it before and the thought that he could be so self-serving at the expense of a devoted soldier revolted him. Once they had freed the girl, he would reward her by ordering her to escape on her own; hopefully her own skills would serve her better than his had during the crisis. He only hoped that she would follow that order as willingly as the rest.

She pushed open the rusting metal door ahead of them, bringing them one step closer to the central courtyard. From there they could reach the graveyard and the temporary holding cells, as well as the main gate that loomed even over the high walls that separated each sector of the prison. Unfortunately, the image that greeted them was enough to make them freeze at the doorway.

"Shit," Helena grunted, her voice betraying the fact that her blood had run cold, just the way his own had.

Lying beside the door that would lead them to their destination was the sprawled corpse of the medic, Bennett. His throat was missing, leaving a gaping, gore-filled rupture where his windpipe had once been, and the damage continued all the way up to his right cheek, where a ragged fissure across his face interrupted the wide-eyed expression of shock and pain on his once-handsome features, now white with blood loss. His skeleton had been stripped of flesh across his torso and limbs, leaving him a shredded, crimson mess. As tragic as the sight of their colleague's ravaged body was, however, they were drawn to more pressing matters. Two large dogs were currently picking what meat remained from the corpse of a trainee several metres away.

The training facility maintained a large stock of various creatures created by the company to test the combat abilities of its students. Although Umbrella had perfected the method to create a Bio-Organic Weapon based on the template of a dog a long time ago, which they had named Cerberus, the process was still expensive and complicated. As such, they preferred simply to use ordinary dogs exposed to the Tyrant virus, without any surgical enhancements, at Rockfort. They were still quick and strong, and relatively simple to mass produce. They presented a formidable opponent, but also an easily-replaced asset.

It appeared that human corpses were not the only ones being dropped upon the hapless survivors that had barricaded themselves within the prison walls.

The pair responsible for the death of their erstwhile colleague, who were now gorging themselves on the meat of another victim, were lean, vicious animals, the dark red of their musculature visible beneath their patchy fur. The beady, bloody eyes above their gore-slicked snouts were focused on the meal lying stretched before them, and they were momentarily heedless of the two living soldiers.

"Can you run, Chief?" the female Sergeant asked him quietly.

"Probably not," he responded, before breathing deeply and steeling himself for what would be absolute anguish at best, "but there isn't a choice."

She nodded grimly, reaching to her shoulder and withdrawing the combat knife that was sheathed in the filthy leather holster there, gripping the handle firmly; he didn't bother to ask her where her other weapons were. They started slowly, doing their best to keep their presence hidden, though they were both acutely aware that the cadaverous beasts could turn and find them at any given moment. The sodden earth muffled their footsteps, their progress covered by the noise of the bombardment and the constant pattering of rain upon the ground. The moisture in the air would help to dampen their scent also. All told, they had the best set of circumstances to facilitate their opportunity to avoid a potentially deadly confrontation.

For them to make good on the opportunity, however, their luck would need to hold out, and it had not been a very lucky day thus far. It didn't seem liable to improve now.

They were halfway to their objective when one of the canines began to snarl hungrily. Helena shot a glance over her shoulder and then noticeably quickened her pace, pressing her right arm into his back in order to force him to do the same.

"Oh shit! Move! Move!" she barked sharply, all pretence of stealth gone as the sound of paws splashing through mud signalled that they were now being chased in earnest.

They cleared the distance to the door in seconds, the dogs snapping at their heels, before the woman stopped and spun sharply, rounding on their pursuers. Confused, Rodrigo looked back over his shoulder and watched as she neatly side-stepped one of the charging canines, raking its flank with the point of her blade. She slit a groove across its side, slicing through the decaying skin and sending lengths of spoiled intestine spilling onto the ground. The scent of rot permeating the area grew in intensity, choking out the smell of fire that was rising from all around them.

It didn't acknowledge the glancing swipe, however, and charged onwards, leaping into the unprepared Captain's side. He let out a gasp of pain as the air was driven out of him and a spasm of pain shot across his torso, causing him to drop to one knee. Its paws struck the dirt, but before it could round on its stumbled prey, Helena struck it with a solid kick to the ribcage that sent it flailing into the waterlogged grass with the sick crack of fracturing bones and a yelp of pain.

"Come on, Chief! Let's go!" she ordered, her voice edged with a quiver of adrenaline that she was barely able to keep in check.

He staggered back to his feet, his eyes widening when they locked with the slick red orbs of the other beast that was rapidly bearing down on them. "Helena…!" he yelled, but before he could shout anything else she had turned, sliding between him and their assailant in a heartbeat.

The dog bowled into her, planting its front feet on her chest and riding her to the ground as she toppled backwards under its full weight and velocity, colliding with Rodrigo and sending him crashing into the mud. A searing agony rose in his torso, stretching from his midriff to his extremities, and he knew with a horrifying certainty that his stitches had ripped apart. He clamped a hand almost instinctively around the newly reopened wound, feeling the warmth of the blood that was already seeping from it and soaking his shirt. For a moment he was paralysed by a sudden, excruciating feebleness.

Helena was screaming, as much from fury as she was from pain, as the second animal clamped its jaws around her right forearm and thrashed its head savagely, tearing into her flesh. She dropped the blade from her useless fingers, snatching it up in her free hand and stabbing it viciously into the creature's throat over and over. Almost as though it were seeking to avenge its partner, the first dog made its return and bit deeply into her own neck with a spray of arterial gore. At that, her cries descended into watery warbles as blood welled in her mouth.

Overcome with anger, Rodrigo forced himself upright and grabbed the struggling canine that was perched atop her body, narrowly avoiding both its teeth and its claws. He threw it roughly to the floor in a thrashing heap, planting a rough boot into its back, just below its head, which snapped its spine and left it whimpering on the ground. The other dog, which had failed to switch its attention away from the female Sergeant who had wounded it, seemed completely unaware of the male's presence right up until he pried the blade from the fingers of his subordinate and plunged it into the top of the beast's skull. By then, however, it was dead.

Slumping back onto a relatively dry patch of ground, the Captain sat numbly for a few brief moments, his hands clamped around the throbbing rent in his side. His eyes flicked back and forth between the body of Benny, lying nearby, and the prone form of the blonde directly beside him. In his time as leader, he had managed to keep the malcontents out of his unit, not out of a sense of altruism, but because he didn't want to think of himself as the leader of a band of murderers. He had always believed that he had given them, and those like them, a place where their innate goodness could flourish without fear of reprisal. Their reward for allowing him to indulge his narcissism had been death; he deserved no less than the same.

But there was something he needed to do first.

He assessed himself quickly; his effort had taken almost everything out of him and his wound was bleeding profusely yet again, but he did not have far left to go. Hopefully, the next few areas would be clear of opposition, or at least they would be easy to dodge even in his stricken state. He spotted the pack worn by Bennett, spying the red cross emblazoned on its bloodied, dirtied front, and crawled to snatch it up. He also managed to pull the knife from the dog's skull so that he at least had some way of defending himself.

He paused, looking at the staring, gore-streaked face of the woman who had saved his life more than once in the past few hours and almost began to wish that he could shed tears to mark her passing. Life with Umbrella had left him cold, he felt, but the loss was no less profound. He settled simply to close her mouth and shut her eyelids so that she at least seemed to have some semblance of peace, even though the violent tear in her oesophagus and shredded arm spoke otherwise. He did the same for Benny and stood up, sliding the knife into his belt and shouldering the bag as he did so.

"I'm sorry," he told them truthfully, wishing that he could think of something more to say. He had always hoped that he would never have to bury one of his followers, let alone all of them on the same day. But if he were the last one left alive on Rockfort Island, he wouldn't let the deaths of the others be in vain.

One way or another, he would save a life before he finally gave up his own.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----

He staggered along the passageway that led to the temporary holding area, using the wall to steady himself whenever his trembling legs threatened to betray his weight to gravity and the concrete below. With his hands, he worked the cap to the small bottle of painkillers he had appropriated from the deceased medic's haversack, which was currently hanging from his shoulders. He emptied a handful of pills onto his palm and swallowed as many as he could, ignoring the dosage information. Once finished, he stuffed the container into his pocket.

The prison was in absolute disarray. Bodies and the wreckage of vehicles lay strewn throughout the compound, making it seem more like a war zone than the massacre it had actually been. It was a miracle that he had lived through the carnage, but if there was no way to arrest his profuse bleeding then the underground cell would be his tomb. He had not yet seen the damage done by his fall, primarily because he did not wish to remove the bandages that had thus far staunched the flow of blood so admirably, though he was forced to wonder how much longer that would last. It was already seeping through the clean cloth of the shirt that he had apparently been changed into while he was unconscious.

He paused at the door to the cell and set the small pack on the cabinet beside the typewriter that was used to print the new prisoner records before sifting through the remainder of its contents. There was another bottle of the Umbrella-manufactured painkillers but little else, although a box of 9mm handgun rounds earned a raised eyebrow. He wondered if Benny had been acting as an ammo-caddy, or if he had been taking precautions in the event that he truly needed to defend himself against the zombies. It was a moot point anyway. The confusion over the bullets aside, Rodrigo's heart skipped a beat when his fingers closed around a fat capsule at the bottom of the bag with a label that identified it as haemostatic medication; it was exactly what he needed to promote clotting and give himself the chance to survive. His hope soared.

He was crushed when he unscrewed the top and found that it was empty, and for the first time since his injury he was lucid enough to feel the true despair of the situation. There was a shudder as another explosion rattled the tunnel and the light winked out, leaving him in almost absolute darkness. It dawned on him that he would die, alone and wounded, in that subterranean passage; it was going to be his fate. That didn't mean that it had to be hers.

Still clutching the useless container in his hand, he opened the door into the holding room. Despite the gloom, he could make out the bars of the cage she was occupying to his right, but not much else, though he could hear what he assumed was breathing. The few yards to the cell door were surprisingly arduous and he needed to keep one hand on the frame of the metal partition so that he didn't stray in the darkness. There was a muted sound of metal rattling and then a miniature nova ignited in the black, startling him and forcing him to raise a hand to cover his eyes. He heard the girl gasp and momentarily wondered which of the guards had been stupid enough to leave her with her lighter. As it stood, their carelessness was a blessing in disguise, as he noticed the keys resting on the table in the dim illumination and unlocked the door.

She took a step away from him, eyeing him suspiciously as she seemed to adopt a more guarded stance. He felt too defeated to care and simply pushed the door open for her, before turning around and slouching into a seat beside the desk. His eyes came to rest on the capsule he had found again and he felt frustration well up in him anew.

"Perfect," he grunted, throwing it down on the floor and watching it bounce across the room.

"What's going on?" she asked him, moving cautiously to the door and looking about at her surroundings. There was something in her voice that more suggested accusation than curiosity, as though she believed that he was trying to trick her.

"You're being set free," he informed her, slipping the combat knife from where he had been keeping it in the belt of his trousers and laying it on the worktop beside him, "this place is finished; there's no one left to stop you, unless you run into the ones who attacked us. A Special Forces team, I think…"

"I don't understand," she said, interrupting his babbling, though she sounded genuinely confused at first, before she managed to reassert her mask of distrust, "why are you doing this?"

"Let's just say that it's been a lousy day for saving lives," he replied, smirking bitterly at the thought as he leaned back in the creaking office chair, "go on. Take the knife if you want; you'll probably need it."

She did nothing for a moment, staring at him with uncomprehending eyes, before gingerly stepping forward and taking up the weapon in her free hand. Watching at the corner of his vision, he nodded to himself as she took it. He saw from her movements that she was not unskilled when it came to using a blade; there was a definite, practiced fluidity to the way she handled it. With that, he had placed her fate back into her own hands, which meant that his part was done. All he could do now was sit and await the inevitable.

"What about you?" she questioned, something approaching real concern appearing in her tone. As the one who had been personally responsible for her imprisonment, that was the last thing he had expected to hear.

"Don't worry about me," he insisted, and for a second there was a haunted flicker in her expression, as though looking at him in that moment had triggered a disturbing memory. It passed, however, and she continued to stare at him with a bizarre combination of a frown and a scowl upon her face. If the situation hadn't been so profoundly grim then he might have found her indecision comical.

"Thanks," she said eventually, after a contemplative moment, to which he simply nodded and turned his head to gaze into the middle distance. She stayed a moment longer, almost as though she were thinking of something else to say to him, but simply remained silent and turned to leave.

When the door shut behind her, he was thrown into darkness once again.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----

Against his expectations, she came back for him.

It was hours later or so he assumed. He had been slipping in and out of consciousness, which had warped his perception of time, but she returned to the cell nonetheless. Until that moment, his only company had been the ghosts in the shadows around him, illusions that loomed large in his mind and returned him to the days of his childhood, when monsters lurked around his bed each and every night. He was older now, but couldn't help feeling that same gnawing, helpless fear in the pit of his stomach.

The zombie had made matters worse. He had been roused from a weakness-induced stupor to the sound of fingernails clawing at the door and for a moment his terror made him believe that one of the creatures from his nightmarish half-sleep had come to kill him at last. In a way, it was exactly that, but Rodrigo didn't think of the carriers as anything so frightening as just another of the corporation's weapons, and a slow, unintelligent one at that. It had taken him a moment, but eventually he had risen to his feet and walked to the chamber's only entrance, ready to meet the monster that had disturbed him.

It was crawling, evidently having missed its footing on the stairwell that led into the underground tunnel and fallen to the floor, breaking one or both of its legs. Even relying solely on his night vision from several hours in the dark, he could see the bloody trail it had left behind it. He could also see its head as it started to reach towards him and so he kicked it until its skull shattered into gory lumps. Once he was certain that it was dead, a quick search of the body, which he guessed had previously been one of the island's trainees from its attire, turned up a 9mm sidearm that was the installation's standard issue.

When the sound of another figure entering the cell jolted him from his disordered thoughts, he sat up abruptly, aiming the handgun at the individual that had appeared before him. The girl started, the flame of the lighter clutched in her hand flickering slightly as she did so. After a moment of hesitation, he set the gun down and sat back in his chair, exhausted but relieved to see another human being after his last encounter. There was a pistol similar to his own holstered at her hip, a further two of a different model strapped to her thighs, and a harness around her shoulders held what appeared to be a bowgun and spring-loaded grenade launcher. She seemed to have helped herself to the training facility's armoury to aid in her escape, but that still did not explain to him why she had returned.

His unvoiced questions were quickly answered, however, when she stepped forward and set a small, plastic capsule on the desk in front of him. He glanced up at her, before reaching out and taking it in his hand, squinting at the label in the gloom.

"Haemostatic medicine," he realised aloud, before looking back at her beyond the bottle he was holding, "how kind of you…"

"Claire," she responded, as he fell silent, introducing herself as she had failed to do last time, "Claire Redfield."

"Thank you, Claire," he said, unscrewing the cap and emptying a handful of the medication onto his palm so that he could swallow it. The pills could potentially save his life if he took them quickly enough and although he did not know for how long or what he would do with his prolonged life, he had no desire to die at all, let alone soon. "Why are you doing this for me?" he asked her, aware that she may have simply been observing a quid pro quo for his own good deed, but wishing to know regardless. In truth, he did not consider her to owe him anything.

"A man died once, and I couldn't do anything to help him," she told him, her voice taking on a distant tone as she stopped to recall a memory from her past, one that seemed harrowing for her to remember, "I didn't know him; we had only just met actually, but I watched him die right in front of my eyes. He told me not to worry about him, and when I came back for him he was already too far gone to save. I couldn't do that again, not to anyone else."

"I understand," he replied, his eyes falling away from her face. There was little he would not give for the opportunity to return in time and save some of the men and women he had seen die in his time as a soldier in the employ of Umbrella. He was particularly regretful for the lives he had watched being snuffed out that day alone.

Shifting in his seat, he reached to one of the pouches attached to the back of his belt with his free hand and fumbled for the item he had placed there. It resembled a Swiss army knife in the sense that it was a series of metal implements sandwiched between two pieces of red plastic, but it was actually a tool that he had found to be far more useful than one of those items could possibly be. He had learned to pick locks as a matter of survival, as being shackled and imprisoned were never enjoyable experiences. Nowadays, he could perform with two pieces of bent wire what he used to accomplish with the device he now held in his hand, but he still found it useful to keep it with him.

"Here, take this," he insisted, holding it out so that she could take it, "I don't know how useful you'll find it, but it's relatively simple to use once you have a grasp of the basics. I hope it can help you escape from this place."

She gripped the object in her own free hand, holding it up so that she could examine it. After a moment, she smiled softly and looked back at him. "I taught myself a little about locks a couple of years ago," she informed him, before her smile widened at the thought of a fond recollection "my brother never approved, but that's Chris. He likes to play it by the book."

There was a warmth in her eyes when she spoke about her brother that made him feel a little less hopeless. If they both lived to be reunited then it would make what he had done for her perhaps the most worthwhile endeavour of his life. "I hope you find him," he said emphatically, and she seemed genuinely touched by his concern. She looked at the lockpick set that he had given her and then at the lighter she was holding in her other hand.

"This was a gift from my brother," she stated, before setting the engraved metal box with its gently wavering flame on the table in front of him, the same way she had done with the pills that she had brought for him, "I want you to keep it with you. No one should be in the dark without a light."

He paused, unsure of what to say in response to her generosity, though there was really only one thing that he could say, he realised. "Thank you," he said, for the second time since she had returned to him, "but you should leave now. I'm not fit for anything more than sitting here, at least for the moment, and your opportunity to escape might be slim at best. Good luck."

"You seem like a good man," she observed, "how did you end up working for Umbrella?"

"They saved my life," he responded truthfully, not wishing to explain further than that, "but considering what I've done in their employ since that day, I wonder if the world would have been better off without me."

"I don't know what you've done, but I know I would have died here without your help," she reminded him, slipping the lockpick into her pocket, "you only get one life."

With those words, she left him to his thoughts in the cell. He hoped that she would be safe beyond the walls of his grim little sanctuary, though from what he had seen she seemed capable of protecting herself from whatever creatures lurked outside. He only prayed that she could find a way to escape the island.

Sighing, he sank into his seat. It would be some time yet, but eventually the last words that she had spoken to him would save his life.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----

You only get one life…

The words stuck with him as he sat at the desk in the holding cell, gazing into the fire from the lighter before he flicked the cap shut to prevent the fuel from running out. Even in the ensuing darkness, it was good to know that he at least had the option of light.

They continued to haunt him as he fled the prison, hearing the sirens that sounded the compound's imminent doom. On his escape, he saw the shapes of cargo planes against the lightening backdrop of the sky, leaving the installation, and hoped that she had been a passenger on one of them. It did not take him long to find his own escape from the self-destruct system; a rocky subterranean passage revealed by the detonations that were rocking the island opened at the other end of the bridge where the jeep had crashed and he hurried inside, trying desperately to stay ahead of the tunnel's instability as it collapsed behind him. With his wound, it wasn't easy, but the painkillers made the trip bearable and the haemostatic allowed him to move without fear of bleeding out.

Once he was certain that he was no longer in danger of being crushed to death or buried alive, he collapsed in an empty stretch of tunnel, clasping the lighter that he had been gifted tightly in his right hand, as though it were a lifeline. In his haste, he had dropped his sidearm somewhere and now the girl's token was the only thing in his possession. He remained that way for some time, sitting in the dim, half-light of the underground hallway, the faint luminescence provided by wall sconces, which he imagined were wired into the generator of the military training facility above. That they were still active suggested that at least part of the island had survived the destruction wrought by the explosions.

Eventually, there was another collapse nearby and he expected to be swallowed by the earth, suffocating beneath tons of damp, pungent soil at any moment. He had not expected to see another person, and was alarmed when a man, younger than himself, walked around the corner.

"I wasn't expecting to see anyone else alive," Rodrigo called by way of greeting, waving a pacifying hand when the other man's head snapped up to take him in, the Glock held in his hands tracking his position as he did so.

"Who are you?" he questioned in response, his voice hard and impatient. From the dark green military fatigues beneath his black flak jacket and the heavy set of his muscular physique, he had the air of a soldier. However, there was an agitation in his stance that offset his otherwise professional demeanour.

"The name's Rodrigo," the older individual answered, "I can't say for sure, but I might just be the only one left alive in this God-forsaken place. I hope you didn't get your hopes up on finding anything here, stranger, because there isn't a lot left."

"I'm looking for someone," he explained, apparently reasoning that the injured soldier was his only possible opportunity to obtain a lead, "my sister, Claire Redfield. Do you know her?"

The Cuban's eyes widened at the mention of her name, his grip on the lighter he held as a memento of her growing that much tighter. Looking up at the man, searching his face, there was a flicker of something, a passion that he had recognised in his sibling, residing there. "I can see the resemblance," he replied, with a slight smile.

Almost immediately, the newcomer was at his side, a firm hand on his shoulder that gripped him expectantly. "You do know her," he exclaimed, shaking him slightly, "where is she?"

"Gone," he told him, almost certain that she had been among the ones who had escaped, "evacuated aboard a cargo plane. I helped her escape from her cell, but she did the rest on her own, even saved my life while she was at it. Your sister is really something, Chris."

He seemed taken aback to hear his name, but the pressure on his arm quickly became a reassuring and comradely one. "Any friend of hers is a friend of mine," he insisted flatly, before lifting his arm in an attempt to pull him to his feet, "now come on, we need to get out of here. Is that wound gonna hold?"

"It should, thanks to Claire," Rodrigo nodded, aiding the other man as best he could. He had believed that he was ready for death, but now he knew with certainty that he had only just begun to live his life as it was meant to be lived. Just as the brunette had told him, he would only get one life; he was determined not to waste it.

Before he had even obtained verticality, however, there was another rumbling and the ground began to quake even more violently than before. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps the cave was collapsing and then he watched in horror as the ground opened up before him.

It was a vision of hell. Dirt and rock split apart to reveal a writhing mass of meat, convulsing and contorting, as it split through the earth. The creature, whatever it was, rose from the depths, an enormous tube of pulsating, rotten muscle caked in dried mud, covered in knots of tumours and scarring. Like an immense worm, it twisted as it shot into the air, arching its head downwards and opening a mouth that was little more than the end of its massive form, skin peeling away to reveal slime-coated teeth and the dark depths of its innards. It dove down towards them and there was only time for one single, impulsive action. He shoved his new partner aside, forcing him out of the way as the pillar of flesh loomed.

Against all odds, he missed the undulating, razor-sharp hooks at its maw and plunged into the tube that was its stomach. It was damp and black as pitch, smelling of decay so strongly that it made him retch, before that stench was replaced with that of something burning. Rather than the smoky air of a flame, however, this was an altogether different scent. He realised that it was his skin that was on fire, sloughing from his muscles as the worm's acid began to melt it off his body. After all he had survived, this is how he would die.

He kicked and thrashed for as long as his strength would last, lashing out at the walls of muscle and bone around him, determined that he would at least make the creature regret taking him as its meal. His vitriol could only last so long before the ravages of the chemical slowly reducing him to pulp sapped away the last small piece of energy he had left. Spent, there was little he could do but wait for death to come.

And then the tube convulsed, the walls of its enormous belly, like a cave in its own right, constricted around him. The wind was crushed from him and he could feel his ribs fracturing within his chest. He could do nothing but lie, defeated, as the monster's immense form heaved over and over, before regurgitating him onto the floor of the cavern. Being outside of the monster was not the relief that it should have been, because the air burned his corroded skin. He writhed upon the ground, knowing that soon he would be dead, his last desperate attempt to prolong his life at a miserable end. He had only just begun to redeem himself.

The face of Chris Redfield appeared over him, the younger man dropping to his knees beside the dying man and searching desperately for some way to save the life that was slowly fading before him, an anguished expression on his youthful features. "Its dead," he told him, gloved hands hesitating to touch as they took in the damage that had been wrought to his flesh, "hang in there. Come on!"

Rodrigo could feel his entire body quivering, barely able to stand the pain that seemed to have settled over him like a suffocating blanket that hugged to his very bones. His clothing had fused to his body in a mess of material and liquidised organic matter; he was melting. Unable to make anything more than a gurgling groan, he opened his right hand and dropped the object he was holding at the other individual's feet. It was the lighter that Claire had given him, undamaged by the acid that had eaten the rest of him away due to how firmly he had been gripping it in his palm.

The token had come full circle; Chris had given it to his sister, who had in turn given it to him, and now he was returning it to its original owner. As she had said, no one should be in the dark without a light, and the younger male had a longer way to go in the dark than he did. It was the last gesture he could make that would serve as atonement, small as it was.

His sight went dim, his body falling still, and then he was gone, to join his fallen colleagues.

-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----