Chapter One: Savin' Me

When Alice opened her eyes again, she was still staring up at the white ceiling. Her vision at first was fuzzy, but it cleared after a moment. She blinked again, and slowly sat up, seeing her reflection in the glass on one of the walls. She had wires in all parts of her body; legs, arms, torso and in the side of her head. She screamed out in pain, her muscles aching as if she hadn't used them in months. She began tearing at the needle sites, ripping the tubes from her body. It hurt, but that didn't stop Alice's tirade. The last one she pulled was from the side of her head, and it made a sound similar to pulling a tube of an air tank. She screamed in frustration again, throwing herself off the operating table. Her feet and legs failed to hold her upright, and she landed on the floor. Backing up in a crawl, she then used the table to help stand. She was wearing only two white sheets stringed together over her shoulders, barely providing any decency. She looked herself over in the reflective glass again. She had small wounds from where the needles had been injected in her body, and her hair had grown since she last remembered. The hair around the side of her head had been shaved down to allow the head tube space to be put in. She looked to her right arm and noticed smaller circular wounds in the shape of a triangle in the small of her elbow. The scar on her left shoulder seemed purple and pink with irritation, as if they had cut into it again. She still didn't remember where she'd gotten that from in the first place. Hitting the glass with her hands, she yelled, "Let me out!" to no avail. No one was there. Taking matters into her hands, she walked back to the table, and grabbed one of the bloody IV needles that had been in her hand. She walked to the door, and fiddled with the mechanism, jabbing the needle in at a forty five degree angle. Suddenly, she hit what she'd been looking for, and a few sparks flew, unlocking the door. It swung open, and Alice walked down the empty hallways of what she believed to be the Raccoon City hospital. Grabbing a doctor's lab coat, she walked to the entrance way. She couldn't believe what she saw. Destruction was everywhere. Cars on fire were crashed and left to die. Pieces of newspaper and other debris were flying through the air. No one was around. She crossed her arms as she walked down the street towards a few police cruisers. She looked in one and found nothing, then, she looked in the other, grabbing the standard issue shot gun tucked inside the passenger door. Cocking the pump-action shot gun, Alice knew now that things had gone so terribly wrong. If people weren't around, and destruction enveloped the city, it meant only one thing: The T-Virus had escaped.


Walking down the streets devoid of humans, Alice found her way to a Surplus store. Inside were guns of all varieties, and clothing. She found a tank top, some jeans, and boots to her liking, changing out of the lab coat. She took two pistols and grabbed holsters as well, strapping on a belt, and thigh holsters. Suddenly, she felt a writhing pain in her left arm, and just as she had done up the button on her jeans, the blonde fell to her knees. The pain seared through the rest of her body, and for a moment, she swore she saw something moving beneath her skin of her upper arm. Alice thought that maybe her eyes were deceiving her. What the hell had they done to her? Alice felt panic grip her heart. Holding her arm, she realised something was most definitely in there, and she began seeing flash backs of the moment she and Rain were taken away and separated. Just Do It. The doctor's voice reverberated in the back of Alice's mind. She closed her eyes. They had injected her directly with the virus.

"Psst!" A hushed hiss of a voice made Alice startle and jump back. She drew the pistol shakily and looked around. She had no idea what had just made that noise, whether it was a person or something else. "Alice?" The voice called. A curved figure emerged from the shadows of the back room. Alice's eyes widened.

"Rain?" She stood up slowly and the figure came into more of the light provided by the street lamps outside. Her long wavy hair hung below her breasts and she was wearing her usual of all black, tight fitting clothing. The blonde lowered the weapon, holstering it on her thigh.

"What the fuck did they do to you?" Rain asked, her voice carrying its usual demeanour, however she seemed to have a worried undertone.

"I…I don't know." Alice replied, hanging her head as she looked at her left arm. The moving bulge had disappeared for now. "What about you? Are you okay?" Alice stood in front of her, looking down into Rain's dark eyes. The commando's lips curved into a smirk.

"They can't keep a good bitch down. They thought they were gonna put some shit into me, but I didn't let that happen." Rain rolled back her long black sleeve on her left arm, showing one elongated scar drawn from the inside of her elbow down to her thumb. It was about a quarter of an inch in diameter and still red around the edges, but otherwise looked mostly healed. "Got that when the bastards decided they were gonna stab me. Fought like hell, and escaped out to here where all fucking hell broke loose." Rain let her sleeve go, and she slung the familiar Mp5k around from her back. Alice looked over the other weapons in the store, grabbing herself a shot gun like the one she'd earlier, slinging it in a holder over her own back. She too decided that a pair of sub-machine guns would do her some good, and so she took a pair similar to Rain's without ACOG scopes. Rain looked like she already had everything she needed.

"Where do we go from here?" Alice asked, looking out the front glass window. There were a few cracks here and there. Rain stood beside her, turning her head to look up at the taller blonde.

"I say we get the fuck outta here, kick some of the undead's asses, and make a break. You?"

"That sounds like a damn good plan to me."


Alice and Rain ventured out into the streets again, watching each other's backs. So far, they hadn't seen any of the undead, but they heard the shots and screams coming from the direction of Raven's Gate Bridge. Both agreed to avoid that end of the city seeing as they knew then they wouldn't get out. It felt that for hours, they walked city blocks, trying to find a way out. But walls surrounded the city, and there was no hope in hell to escape the thirty foot solid concrete barriers, topped with barbed wire and numerous Umbrella guards. Alice wondered if all hope was lost. What would happen if they tried to escape? Were the men who experimented on her looking for her? Alice wasn't sure. As they rounded a corner, Alice jumped when she heard something ringing. She looked at Rain who looked around them, trying to locate the source of the noise. The ex-Umbrella soldier's eyes settled on the row of payphones until she found the one that was working.

"Hello?" Rain answered the phone harshly and kept the phone close to her ear, her brows knitting together after the first five minutes went by. She seemed to get even more concerned right as she hung up, and then to answer Alice's curious glance, she told what this Dr. Ashford had just told her. "We gotta find his kid. She's in the school. That's another block over. We get the kid, we can get on a helicopter and get the fuck outta here. Got it?" Rain ordered. Alice nodded and the pair again began their trek across the street and through an alleyway. In the alley, next to the dumpster was a soldier. Or, what used to be a soldier. He had a bullet in his head, but there was blood all over his mouth. Rain shot one round from her sub-machine gun just to make sure that he wouldn't get up and come after them. Alice followed in tow, taking out her shot gun. If there were any of the infected in the school, she was going to blast any life remaining out of them for good. She pumped it once, sending one slug into the chamber full of buckshot. Rain approached the door, kicking it open as she peered down each hallway. "All right. You take the left, I take right. We meet in the caf in half an hour. If we haven't found this girl by then, we go together." Rain gave her orders without second thoughts. It was something that came as a first nature for the commando. Alice of course, had no objections. She still felt dazed and confused about everything up until this point. Why did they want to experiment on her? What was so special about their Ex-head of security in the Hive? The mere thought caused the blonde to shiver as she walked the eerily empty halls. She felt an odd feeling build up in the pit of her stomach, as if she was going to be sick. 'No, no not now Alice.' She thought. Now was definitely not the time to let her guard down.


Rain took the hall to the right which led down into what she thought were the really primary aged students. Finger paintings and crafts lined the cork boards on the walls. She almost chuckled at the irony of it all. Still, with the outbreak, something remained colourful. She kicked in each door as she passed it, taking a brief observation for anything mobile in each class room. She rounded the corner, gun muzzle going first before Rain. She pushed back her thick hair, wishing she had a hair-elastic then. The commando kicked the first door to the right in the next hall way, and paused at the sight. There was a girl in the corner, curled up, head on her knees. Rain rushed in, jogging to her, gun still raised.

"Hey. Hey little girl. You deaf or something?" Rain barked. The girl remained. Rain drew closer, and nudged her with the toe of her combat boot. The girl looked up, her eyes a piercingly pale blue, blood all over her front. "Shit." Rain cursed, instantly shooting her before the girl could try to bite her. Rain had lived through that once. She didn't need to again. Turning around, she froze. She thought the room had been empty. She was ever so wrong. Standing now between Rain and the door were a pack of at least ten infected children. Most people would be too disturbed to fire upon what were once innocent children, but Rain was indifferent. She fired out the magazine in her Mp5k, knowing now that only head shots killed the undead. She wasn't going to make the mistake she did in the Hive and expend her ammunition so quickly. The undead children all fell where they stood. Rain sighed deeply before continuing onwards, looking for the girl named Angela Ashford.


Alice heard the gunfire, and a part of her wanted to go help Rain. But she knew deep down that the other woman had been a soldier; she could handle herself. Besides, this gut feeling wasn't going away. In fact, it was growing stronger by the minute. She opened the last door in the hallway, and she stopped mid-stride. There was a clicking noise on the tiles. Turning around slowly, Alice almost cursed. Before her were four of the infected Dobermans she had seen down in the Hive. "God dammit." She breathed deeply, raising her shot gun. The first of the four lunged at her, and she shot it cleanly, blasting its head open, bits and coagulated blood plastering the walls. The blonde ran back into the classroom, slamming the door. The dogs however broke the glass and were now in the same room. Alice's fingers fiddled with loading the next shell as they began to circle her. She backed into a corner, and shot the next one dead. But the third and the fourth could almost smell that she was struggling to reload in time. Both lunged at the same moment, and Alice held up the shotgun to defend herself, using it as a melee weapon. However, that was almost unnecessary as two shots were fired from the doorway.


"Stay." A man's voice ordered. It had a slight accent to it, and Alice's blue eyes darted to the broken door. Standing there was a man with black hair, dressed as if he was a soldier. Alice noticed the Umbrella patch and raised her shot gun. "Hey. Don't worry about it. I used to work for them." He chuckled, opening the door. "You're looking for the girl too?" He asked, just as he was joined by yet another man, dressed in a jacket and a fedora.

"Aw shit man." He spoke loudly. "Oh well uh, didn't see you there." He was of African-American decent and had a goatee. The other taller man looked back at Alice, expecting an answer. She walked over slowly, hesitantly.

"Yeah. I am. I'm not alone either." She pointed out, looking at her watch. "Come on. If we work together, we can all get out of here." As she walked through the doorway, the first man offered his hand.

"The name's Carlos Oliveira." Alice shook his hand once and started walking in the direction of the cafeteria. "You?"

"I'm Alice." She replied distantly, her ears on the alert for any more gunshots. She hoped Rain was all right. For her to be reunited with the commando, only to have her actually die again, would almost be heartbreaking.

"Normally, I'd ask you to call me Lord James, but in these circumstances, you can just call me LJ." The man in the fedora smiled. Alice rolled her eyes as she kicked open the swinging doors. What surprised her was that Rain was standing there, her hand on the shoulder of a girl who looked about twelve years old.


"Took you long enough, Alice. You had me worried there. Who're your friends?" She questioned, giving Carlos a look. She swore she knew him from somewhere. Well, he was wearing an Umbrella uniform. She figured she had probably seen his face once or twice during training or work.

"Carlos and LJ. They were looking for the girl too." Alice said softly as she approached Angela. "All right. It's time we got out of here."

"There was one detail I forgot to mention." Rain began. "They're planning to nuke this place."

"What?" Alice turned back, looking at the brunette over her shoulder.
"Aw shit." LJ complained. "That can't be good."

"How many kilotons?" Carlos asked softly. He had to know how big of a bomb they were going to use.

"Fifteen." Rain replied coldly as she started to manhandle Angela out of the school. She hadn't bothered with the names and sappy crap. Rain liked it to be simple, clean cut and to the point.

"What does that mean?" LJ asked as he fell into stride beside Rain. She noticed from the corner of her eye that he had not one, but two gold-plated Desert Eagles in his belt. She rolled her eyes. He was the stereotypical black guy.

"Means we're fucked." She said blatantly. Angela looked up at her. "Kid, don't look at me like that. It's not my fault. Just bein' honest." Alice stood in on the other side, and then as they stopped in the street, Alice looked her in the eyes.


"Angela…" Alice said softly. The red-blonde girl looked up at her, clinging onto the lunchbox. "Let me see." At first, the girl shook her head. Rain arched a brow at Alice. Alice proceeded to bug her, until the girl sighed, and rolled up her sleeve. On her arm were a series of small circles in clusters of six, some still red from puncturing her skin, others scarred over. Rain looked at her arm.

"What the hell?"

"She's majorly infected." Alice started to explain. Rain then raised her Mp5k, and cocked it as if to shoot her. Alice saw the movement and stood between them defensively.

"She is too." The girl finally spoke up, her voice containing a crisp British accent of a London school girl. Rain's brows furrowed deeply as she shifted her glance and her gun to Alice now.

"The T-Virus is keeping her alive…" Alice explained softly, putting her hand over Rain's submachine gun. Rain shook her head, and then lowered it, defeated.

"What's with the lunch box, kid?" Alice then watched as Angela opened it up. In it, was what she suspected. Several vials of the anti-virus were stood up in metal holders contained within the lunch box.

"She uses them to keep the virus in check." Alice said softly, putting an arm around Angela. They knew each other from before, and kept close as the ragtag group moved out of the school, with Rain and Carlos in the lead. After all, Rain knew where to take them to meet Dr. Ashford.

As the group of LJ, Carlos, Angela, Alice and Rain hurried in the dark to the designated location for Angela's pick up, Alice felt something in the back of her mind that was warning her. Something was just not right…