Barry was taking care of everything.
The whole journey, by chopper, by Land Rover, she'd sat in silence beside him, wondering how much she should trust him. After what had happened at Arklay, after what had happened with Wesker, how could she?
She didn't have a choice. There was nothing left. Every step she took was an effort, every thought an uphill struggle. She couldn't even speak. She was useless now. With sleep, with medicine, with time, she'd recover. She hoped.
Until then, Barry was taking care of everything.
Right now, he was paying for hotel suites, one for each of them. She limped upstairs, his jacket draped over her shoulders. It was the lightest burden she'd carried in two weeks. Her bloodied face still drew too much attention.
Carlos didn't speak. He took his key and left her at the door to her room. His mind was elsewhere.
She ignored the bedroom. Later for that. The bathroom first. Typical hotel luxury. Ceramics and stone, all polished to gleaming. Spotlights giving out off-white illumination. Just orange enough to be warm without being garish. Wide mirror. Large basin. All of it wasted on her.
She staggered to the sink and threw the medkit down beside it. She could see the smear of blood her hand had left on the wall behind her. And she could see herself. The cut on her swollen lower lip. The black eye. The thick track of blood in her hairline, gummed shut with dirt and dark hair. Skin stained black by smoke, oil, grease. Blood.
She looked like hell.
She pulled her right arm out of Barry's jacket and let it slide off her left. Something felt broken. The joint was stiff to the point of paralysis. She was afraid of what she'd find when she reached skin. The patch of dried gore on the shoulder of her shirt had been there since the monster had wounded her. She needed to see the wound for herself.
She unbuckled her harness. Or tried, at least. The clips snagged. Her fingers felt swollen. Tactless. She yanked it up over her head, one-armed. It caught around her neck and rubbed the skin raw. She swore and grunted and whimpered until it came loose. Then she threw it across the room.
She picked at the lace of her flak vest, trying to work up enough slack to wriggle out. Her broken nails snapped and bent as she tried to work them between the strings. A couple of inches was all she could manage.
She pulled the armour up. It caught around her bust and crushed the air out of her lungs. She breathed a lungful of sweat and rot in the musty confines of the jacket, and then kept pushing. It came loose. The relief was enough to make her cry out.
She dropped it on the floor and collapsed over the basin, spitting bile into the sink. Strings of slime clung to her lips and teeth, sticking no matter how hard she tried to shake them loose. A revolted shiver rattled through her body. She wiped them away on the back of her wrist.
She was exhausted already. So much for being in peak condition.
She looked up into her reflection. Through the dirt and blood and matted hair, there was fire in those eyes. She'd survived the city. She'd survived Umbrella. Its assassins. Its monsters. This was supposed to be the easy part.
Why wasn't it easy?
Her throat was raw. She couldn't remember the last time water had touched her lips. She screwed open the faucet and ducked her head under, drinking deep. Every gulp made her throat spasm with pain, but the cold soothed.
She didn't even try to unbutton the shirt. She balled her fists in fabric and pulled. Plastic poppers bounced off the mirror. One rolled into the basin, circled the drain and then vanished into the hole.
Blood was seeping through the gauze pad taped to her collarbone. She had Nicholai to thank for that. She'd need to change the dressing. But that wasn't her priority just now.
She shrugged off the shirt. The fabric had turned to cardboard with dirt and gore long dried. She wouldn't be putting it back on again.
The wound was worse than she remembered. Now it was a black crater at the top of her arm. Every time she moved, the skin creased and cracked. Filth from the injury was smeared the length of her arm. And it itched. God it itched.
Her nail grazed the skin. The grotesque sore swelled to meet it. A searing tingle spread across her shoulder, provoked by the touch. She raked her finger across the burn. The flesh split. Blood spilled down her arm.
The pain made her tremble. Her teeth snapped together, catching the tip of her tongue. Iron flooded her mouth.
And still it itched.
She slapped her palm against the wound. Black flesh cracked. The scar burst. Gore ran like a river. This time, the pain drove her to her knees. But at least it stopped the itch.
She needed to wash. She needed to get the blood off.
Her legs trembled whenever she put weight on them. Still she kicked herself along the floor, towards the shower cubicle. She pushed open the door and dragged herself over the threshold. She clawed for the tap, painting everything she touched crimson.
The water came, cold and painful. Then warm. The pain lessened. Hot at last. A different kind of pain. Her skin turned pink. Pollution ran off her in a mudslide and swirled into the drain. She hugged her knees and let the rain wash over her.
She massaged her fingers into her shoulder. Dead skin sloughed away. Beneath was raw, red, new flesh. The hole had screwed shut, leaving only a puckered crease at the top of her arm. It hurt, but she had to get it clean.
With the first strength that came, she kicked her boots off and wriggled out of her combats. They lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the cubicle, bleeding dirt. She stood, clutching at the polished fittings to hold herself upright. Her muscles were burning. Screaming. But the heat eased the ache.
She tilted her face into the downpour. Her hair, in its muddied clumps, split apart, slithering back behind her ears.
The grimace she had been wearing for the last few hours, maybe even days, slackened. Something else took hold. She started to smile. A laugh bubbled up inside her and popped from her mouth. Hot water splashed on her tongue. It felt good. She gargled and giggled, enjoying the moment.
I'm out. I'm really out. I made it. We made it.
She didn't know how it was even possible. But she was out.
And then her smile faltered. The world faltered. Every drop of water seemed to freeze in the air. Her heart stopped in her chest with one final, deafening beat. Someone, somewhere screamed.
It took her a moment to realise that it was her.
Pain speared through her, as though something in her gut had ripped. Her legs turned to rubber again. They folded and dropped her with a splash onto her knees. Her hands clamped around her stomach. Her fingers curled, clawing at the skin, drawing blood.
The water hammered down on her back, forgotten.
What's happening? What's happening to me?
She tried to breathe. A gasp was all she could manage. The pain had closed around her lungs like a fist, crushing the life out of her. She choked. Spluttered. Sucked oxygen. The grip wouldn't loosen.
Something moved under her hands. She recoiled like she'd been stung. And that was when she saw her hands.
The veins on their backs had turned to fat, black cables beneath her flesh. She traced them up her arm, to where the bulging vessels spread like roots from the scar. They pulsed, fit to burst.
"Oh God!"
She wrenched back the shower door and crawled to the basin. It was an effort just to stop herself curling up around the agony in her belly and lying on the bathroom floor. She dragged herself up, confronting her reflection.
The broken, battered her of mere minutes ago was gone. Now her teeth were bared in a snarl. Her hair hung down in front of her face, wild. The black lines seized her neck. Swelling. Tightening. Constricting.
She watched as they reached out over her face, creeping from beneath her hairline, stretching across her cheeks. They swarmed around her mouth, her nose, the corners of her eyes. She grunted, a scream strangled into silence by a throat twisted shut.
But she found her voice when the thing inside her turned her eyes black. She screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
And screamed.
Her eyes snapped open. Warm darkness swallowed her. She couldn't move. Something was smothering her. Suffocating her. She kicked out, her legs snaring in whatever was clinging to her body. It held tight, bunching at her calves, tangling around her fists as she hammered at it.
A hand wrapped around her forearm and jerked her upwards, out of the membranous sac as it closed around her. The grip was strong, the skin rough, but gentle. It comforted her, the familiarity of that hand.
She let it bear her upwards. An arm curled around her back, holding her tight to a muscular chest. The hand released her and found her head, pressing her to a body that smelled and felt like home. She crushed her face to it, a shuddering cry rushing past her lips, half a sob and half a scream.
A voice breathed loving words into her ear. Lips kissed her crown through her hair. All she could do was cling like a drowning woman to the body of her saviour as nightmare and reality found their rightful places.
The duvet she'd been fighting with slipped away. Chris kept holding her until she stopped trembling, until the rush of adrenaline and terror and confusion had subsided.
"You okay?"
She nodded, blinking tears out of her eyes. "Just give me a minute."
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