I wrote the part about the allegation memo while listening to Metallica's "Master of Puppets."The memo itself is a special item that can be found in Easy or Normal Mode while playing as any character.

George being offered the position of researcher was taken from the Decisions, Decisions scenario. When he ad-libs in the main hall, he mentions that he studied virus research for some time at the university. I built off of that. George's comment about just turning thirty-nine is a reference to Silent Hill. Harry says Cheryl just turned seven last month.

The hospital itself was a metaphor for a few things. The most prominent, in-game metaphor was how Umbrella did things behind the scenes while using a genuine-looking front. This only served to undermine itself and the human population. The second metaphor was for George's light and dark sides. The hospital is a place to be safe and cared for, yet there are monsters everywhere. The final metaphor is for how George's devotion to his work caused his life to deteriorate. The hospital has decayed, much like his marriage. The quote George sarcastically uses is from the Romantics poem, "Ozymandias." The quote was in a different context in the original work than it is now. The original meaning applies to Umbrella, as it as about human pride standing nothing to the powers of nature and time. The secondary meaning pertains to George, as he has built this legacy of work, but it has led to nothing. Yes, this chapter is mainly George's introspection, but it is his workplace. This is much unlike the game, where he barely comments on the hospital's state at all..

I own nothing.

"Don't just sit there, shoot!" Kevin exclaimed as he opened fire on the zombie closest to him.

I didn't know what was more chilling; the fact that the undead nurse's decayed face was just inches from me, or that I had had only one shell left in my shotgun. The others had been expended on the streets of the city, and in the playground. I needed to make my remaining shot count.

Hearing poor Hursh screaming his head off, and his body smacking off of the side wall and supply cabinets while the Leech Man tortured him threw a wrench into this, as it badly interfered with my concentration. My vision was becoming hazy with building tears at my friend's suffering.

With a quick apology to Cindy, I braced my elbow on her shoulder to steady the gun, and fired. The recoil caused us both to groan in pain, and blood from the zombie's foul face splattered us both.

Cindy turned her attention to the remaining creature. Her first shot grazed its shoulder, and the following one hit it square in the chest, but without a sufficient force to bring it down. The third, however, was enough.

A shriek of the purest terror burst out from behind the barricade, and my blood ran cold. Hursh…Hursh was going to die…

I didn't bother to ask for help. I simply switched the spent shotgun into a melee weapon by adjusting my grip on it, and began to scramble over the barricade without being inhibited.

The greatest shock, however, was the fact that I saw absolutely nothing over the top, save for the blinds rustling slightly, and the body of a doctor I didn't recognize. Hursh and his attacker had completely vanished.

The shotgun slipped out of my heads, clattering to the floor.

"What just happened?" Kevin exclaimed, grabbing my shoulder and shaking me.

"Wha—Where's Dr. Hursh?" Cindy asked in a confused voice.

I didn't mean to startle them, but I couldn't control my impulse after losing a person so close to me. I whirled around, knocking Kevin's hand off with the speed of the movement, and grabbed onto each of them by their clothing, pulling them to me.

"You're still alive…You're still here…" I whispered after a moment, releasing them.

Their apprehensive expressions fell away a few moments after.

I took a deep breath to compose myself, and half-turned away from them in shame.

Kevin gave my shoulder a soft clap to get my attention. "It's all right. We know."

I had turned back to face them, and had saw their looks of support and sympathy. For Kevin, it had been Raymond. For Cindy, it had been Will. For me, it had been Hursh.

"You okay?" Kevin asked after a moment.

I gave a chuckle in spite of myself, and shook my head. "I'm afraid I won't be for a long time."

Cindy smiled bitterly at that. "Well, we'll just have to fix that, won't we?"

With a good exertion of effort and concentration, we finally made it over the obstacles.

Our resident lawman was the first to survey the scene. He crept carefully around the small area, crouching down here and there to look more closely in some areas.

Cindy and I only managed to find the corpse of a doctor in plain view. I didn't recognize him, even after I'd read his name tag. He'd worked in radiology. No wonder. His pockets were completely turned out, as if someone had been looking for something. The fact that he had gaping wounds completely dry of blood signified that he posed no problem to us.

"Wait a moment…" She looked up at the sound of my voice, "I don't think he was lying here before."

"What do you mean?" Kevin asked suspiciously. He was crouching near the supply cabinet against the wall where the window was positioned.

I shook my head, folding my arms. Either I had been completely desensitized to seeing dead bodies already (unlikely), or I was losing my mind. I didn't want to think about the latter scenario. "I mean exactly what I just said. I don't remember seeing him here."

Kevin and Cindy looked nervous once more, and this time, I probably mirrored their expressions.

He was the first to shake his head out. "Well, sounds like another lovely myst—found the gun." It had slid underneath the cabinet.

He handed it to me a bit hesitantly after checking to see that it had been loaded. I didn't blame him, considering my outbursts, although I felt a little offended.

My eyes followed Kevin as he stood, and came to rest on a drawer. "Bingo."

The lack of power had caused me to not see it earlier, and my career had kept me well out of the elevator control room.

Rising to my feet, I yanked it open to reveal two chilled blood packs. "This should keep the monster at bay for a little while."

"Kickass!" Kevin exclaimed.

As Cindy eagerly took one, and I picked up the other, the officer continued searching the cabinet.

"Huh."

"What is it?" Cindy inquired at his gruff tone.

He pulled out a piece of paper, and handed it to me. "You might wanna look at this, George."

I tried to read his face as I took it. The result wasn't very uplifting; he looked angry, although not at me.

I quickly scanned it at first, but as the document went on, my reading became slower and slower, and whatever calm I regained was ripped away.

"Dear God…" I muttered, collapsing into the chair at the control panel, the paper slipping out of my fingers.

Cindy walked over, concerned.

I waved my hand. "Go ahead. You have my permission to read it. I need to think for a moment."

She nodded dutifully before picking it up.

I took the liberty to stare off into space, and mull over what I had just swallowed.

The text was an allegation memo of the hospital's owners accepting bribes from the global pharmaceutical company known as Umbrella to cover up not only what been occurring beyond the shutter in the waiting room, but also what had been happening underground. I hadn't known there had been a second basement built into the hospital, but it apparently was of all things, a laboratory with which to experiment on mostly animal, but sometimes human, subjects.

I had been lucky that there had been a chair to fall into. I refused to think of the full reality of it; to do otherwise would have crushed my mental state.

"It's not your fault. You hadn't known," Cindy was clearly fighting to keep her voice steady as Kevin took the paper out of her shaking hands to fully examine it.

I had smiled sadly, and nodded. "'It's strange, isn't it? The world goes to nothing, and deception such as this surfaces," after pausing a moment, I added, "I'm now doubly glad to have rejected Umbrella's offer for a job all those years ago."

"As what? A pharmacist?"

I shook my head. "There is more to the company than just producing pills. A little less than twenty years ago, I double majored in the medical and biological fields at Raccoon University. I focused the main part of my studies on viral investigation, and showed considerable promise in it. Umbrella offered me a good-paying position as a researcher, but I declined."

"Why? You were good at it," Cindy asked in surprise.

"I made my decision to stop majoring in two subjects, and chose one. The stress was too great for me. The career Umbrella wanted me to have detailed spreading different viruses to test subjects, rather than curing them. This would benefit gaining knowledge as to how a disease would affect humans, but it wasn't for me. I wanted to heal others, not kill." The irony of the ending statement made the current scene darker.

After a few moments of digesting this, Cindy had patted my hand with a soft smile. "I'm glad you chose the way you did. We wouldn't have met you."

"Same here. I can't thank you enough for all you've done," Kevin added as he handed me the paper, which I folded and placed in my jacket pocket, "Although I gotta ask, how old does that make you? You said this all happened twenty years ago."

"Kevin!" Cindy exclaimed.

I chuckled as I stood. "Well, if you must know, I turned thirty-nine a few months ago."

"You still look good," Kevin replied, "Now, we should probably get going before ol' Leechy comes back."

He spoke too soon. As we emerged from the control room, a loud banging had come from the grate above our heads. We darted inside the elevator, and mashed the button to the second floor. We held our breaths as the form of the Leech Man had stared at his meal getting away through the elevator doors.

I had closed my eyes, and said my final good-bye to Hursh.

XXXXXX

"This should be sufficient," I murmured to myself as I reloaded my handgun. We had gone into the nurse's station after disembarking from the elevator, and I had found a box of rounds lying on the shelf of an open cabinet. I supposed that one of the police officers from before had left it there, and forgotten about it.

A thump was heard as Cindy decisively threw her high heels away from her, having switched them out for a pair of nurse's shoes. "There. Now I can feel my feet."

Kevin was searching the area for useable medicine and a sharp object with which to open the blood packs. He'd asked me what a few of the bottles were on the cart across from the glass medicine cabinet, and unfortunately, I hadn't been able to determine that any of them would be useful to us, save for one of disinfectant.

He headed for the cabinet, which had plenty of bottles stacked closely together.

I walked up behind him.

"Huh. You'd think that someone would've used these earlier." Kevin mused as he slowly extended a hand toward one.

A flicker of movement in the cabinet caught my eye, and I grabbed his shoulder to yank him backwards as the glass shattered.

I hadn't been quick enough; a piece of glass struck his hip as four leeches leaped out.

With a cry, he swatted one away with his hand, causing it to hit the wall with an ugly squish.

The bottles tumbled to the floor, and easily bounced off of it. They were all empty.

"Don't let them crawl away! They'll hide again!" I yelled, stomping on one that was making a beeline for my leg. Its body jerked, and it let out a squeak.

Cindy grabbed her shoe off the floor, and brought it down on top of another of the squirming beasts.

To think that these little bastards were once used in medical procedures…

Before I could stop him, Kevin, with a hiss of pain, pulled the broken glass out of his hip, and threw it on the floor. A leech thirstily drank the blood residue on it right up, but slithered away before I could kill it.

I frantically glanced around for something that my friend could use to patch his hip wound. My eyes landed on a cart loaded with haemostatic medicine and bandages against the back wall. Kevin's guardian angel was clearly watching over him that night.

After ordering him to go over the cart, I searched for the remaining two leeches on the floor, kicking aside bottles as I went. Cindy joined me.

"GOD DAMN IT!" Kevin yelped.

We swung our heads in his direction to see him yank a leech off of his hip. The overturned medicine on the cart verified the fact that the leech had been hiding in wait behind it. Kevin brought his foot down on it just as a great rattling came from the ceiling behind Cindy and me.

The Leech Man swung out of the shaft to land on the floor. I could hear the whistling as his arm swung through the air, and half-doubled over to get out of his range.

Cindy ducked, and lunged forward, her hand out.

I spun to face the monster, and swung my empty shotgun with a grunt. It hit him hard in the chest, knocking him backwards a few steps. I braced myself as he came at me again, and swung once more. The strain on my muscle was painful, making the hit not as strong as the previous one.

The Leech Man, however, was weakened enough from the first hit to be thrown against a cabinet, and slide down to the floor in a writhing heap.

I breathed hard, taking care to roll out my shoulders as I stared at the monster.

At one point, he had been human. I could easily see a pair of shoes on his feet, and the lower halves of the legs were sheathed in pants. Leeches had completely obscured the rest of the body, save the fingers and mouth, which was gaping open.

That mouth was propelled toward me as he heaved himself up with renewed strength. It was as if I hadn't hit him at all.

I let out a cry at the sight as plastic tore from behind me.

Cindy ran over to me, and threw the opened blood pack across the room to the corner directly across from the door out.

The Leech Man practically dove for it, and the remaining leech was about to join him when I brought my foot down on it.

While our enemy was distracted, I looked around for Kevin, and saw him, his hip bound up crudely, coming toward me with two sealed blood packs.

"Let's go!"

XXXXXX

"Well, this is wonderful." Kevin muttered as we shoved the janitor's wheeled cart in front of the door to the station. It wasn't much in the way of a barrier, but it was the closest object within reach.

The Leech Man was on the same floor as us, but we still had to search the area for supplies.

The route to the surgical wing was closed off by a shutter. An undead assistant trapped on the other side pounded on it. The only part of him that could have been indentified was his set of surgical scrubs, which had been splattered with blood. His face had been morphed into a senseless, bloody mess, the remaining chunks of flesh hanging off.

I felt my stomach curl into a knot at the sight before heading down the side hallway with Kevin and Cindy. She was holding the shard of glass that she had used to open the blood pack.

"I'll need to look at that wound later," I commented.

"When there's time," Kevin replied with slight irritation.

The rattling continued in the background as a shadow fell across the corner.

We had flattened ourselves against the side wall. Kevin nodded to me as a pair of rotting hands shot forward from the side as a zombie propelled itself forward. The nurse's head was down, her hair, having fallen out of its bun, obscuring her face like a black veil.

The police man's shot to her head dropped her to the floor, but not before she banged it off the side rail of the staircase. She sprawled on the ground in a broken half-turn.

"There's only one room we can check. The rest are closed off." I iterated as I sidestepped the nurse's body to open the door.

Beyond it was complete and utter disorder. The nearest hospital bed's covers were yanked back, drawers on the nearby table were either yanked open, or lying on the floor altogether, their contents spilled everywhere, and the metal cabinet had both of its doors thrown open. The lights flickered above us. Ruffled curtain of the second bed was drawn.

"Something doesn't seem right here," Cindy muttered.

"No shit! Really?" Kevin muttered sarcastically while I went over to a drawer was lying on the floor. Inside sat what remained of a small spool of much-abused bandages.

I began to redress his wound.

With an exasperated sigh, she replied, "What I was trying to say is look how disorderly this is as compared to the cabinet in the nurses' station. While there are still supplies around here, those bottles inside had been empty. In fact, the only thing inside that was at least somewhat useful was this."

I looked up to see her holding out a piece of paper. Kevin took it, and we studied it.

It read BF2 at the top with four sets of four-digit numbers, each separated by a solid black line.

"That's…odd," I observed, "How can we decipher this?"

"Beats me." Kevin responded, shrugging, "But what did you mean about the bottles?"

"Well, remember how the majority of the station was about as messy as this room?"

"Except for the cabinet?" I asked, beginning to catch on. A chill began to run down my spine. "The leeches were behind the cabinet. Do you mean…"

She nodded slowly.

I shook my head. "Th-that's impossible. They can't be that smart."

"Smart enough to do what? Oh no, no…You're shitting me!" I quickly finished up so I was out of the way before Kevin drove his fist down through the air.

Cindy was silent for a moment, her fists clenched. "The quicker we move, the sooner we'll be away from the leeches."

At that, she began to pick through the debris for what was useable.

"I'll check around the curtain." Kevin decisively stated.

I glanced up over his head at the grate in the ceiling before nodding and assisting Cindy.

"Good deduction." I praised as I tugged a green herb out of its overturned pot. It had fallen off of the nightstand.

She smiled wryly at me while shaking a bottle of disinfectant. From the sound of it, it was half-full. "Thanks. I just wish it could've been better news."

I smiled sadly before turning my attention to underneath the bed, taking care to look before reaching under by moving the sheet. Much to my relief, I uncovered a reward for my efforts: a first aid spray. "It's a shame. This place used to be so bright, so full of life."

She emptied a capsule with a regretful look on her face. Three blue pills fell into her hand.

Kevin reentered the area with a stack of what had looked like clothes in his hands. A knife was clenched between his teeth.

Cindy and I rose to assist him, but the grate began to rattle. Kevin's eyes stretched wide.

Cindy dashed over to open the door, hopping over a few things on the floor as she did so. I moved just as quickly over to Kevin, and nearly tripped on one of the sheets. He met me halfway, and I grabbed what I could before making a break for it.

The grate fell to the floor just we crossed the threshold.

After speeding down the stairs, we took a moment to catch our breath before I directed them to the locker room. Kevin had only managed to find two sets of clothing. That was fine with me; I had some clothes of my own in the doctors' station.

Cindy was the first to enter and change. We waited as patiently as we could outside while the zombies' moans echoed from beyond the wall.

"Back where we started," Kevin muttered, jerking his thumb to the side door. Beyond that was the door to the security office. The door next to it, leading to the front lobby, was shuttered.

I sighed, holding out the paper with the numbers. "Honestly, I can't wait to leave. This second basement had better exist, otherwise we don't have a prayer of leaving."

"Hey, don't worry about it."

I glared at him. His habit of downplaying things was getting on my last nerve.

His face fell at my expression. "Look, I'm just trying to get you to stop banging your head against the wall about this. For the last goddamn time, it's not your fault!"

The conversation was cut short by a scream from inside of the locker room.

"CINDY!" We exclaimed, running inside.

Her back was to us, her hair down. One hand was quickly tugging down a blouse over her stomach, while the other was shakily aiming a gun at the female zombie that was dangerously close to her.

I managed to make out the facial features, namely the naturally sunken-in eyes, and gasped. It was Madison, an intern. She had been so young, and had looked so forward to graduating from nursing school…Cindy, even though she didn't know it, was facing off against what she so wanted to be.

Her shot missed due to nerves, and she cried out in pain as Madison's nails scratched her face.

Acting on impulse, I grabbed her by the waist, yanking her back.

Kevin took advantage of the situation by ramming knife right between the undead woman's eyes. She crumpled to the ground, the blood gushing out of the wound to completely mask her face.

I tightened my grip slightly on the waitress while watching the scene, and felt a sharp pang of pity for the murdered girl.

"She came out of a locker…" Cindy murmured while picking up the pants she had meant to change into off of the bench.

I let go of her, and self-consciously cleared my throat.

"Oh great, zombies can now hide too. What'll they think of next?" Kevin groaned, putting his hands on his head. An all-too-familiar pounding from above us began

"Security office!" I exclaimed before grabbing the handle on the door.

It was aflame.

Not only was a good portion of the room being incinerated; the guard himself was! His position was still identifiable because his uniform was only partially singed at the moment; he had fallen into the fire quite recently.

The jingling of the keys at his belt was eerie noise against the crackling of the fire.

I, being the closest one to him, had to do away with him. Calling out to Kevin and Cindy to get out of the way, I swung the shotgun at him, and let go. Given the abuse it had gone through earlier, I doubted it would fire again.

The guard wasn't a well-built man by any standards, and his girth easily brought him down.

It was then that I saw the words that had been etched into the wall as if by the teeth of keys (probably his). FIRE NO LE—the rest was unable to be read.

Kevin brushed by me with an extinguisher while Cindy took a look at the control panel. "This button opens the shutter to the lobby. Should we press it?"

I was about to say no due to the location of the zombies, but I stopped myself. There were a few vending machines in the lobby, and we would need to have something to keep us going.

I nodded, and she did so as Kevin completed his task.

XXXXXX

The lobby was rather short in edible quantities. The most we found was a can of tomato juice, and a few bags of chips.

The side doors to the waiting room were accessible, but after hearing Hursh's dark tale, we had decided to skirt them altogether.

That left the office, which was a different story.

Water was dripping from a series of leaking pipes into the two sinks of the room, creating puddles that leeches were living and breeding in. We had to watch our feet, and our hands, since they also took to crawling on the countertops. As compared to the previous, orderly version of the room, this was a complete disgrace.

I picked up a phone book, and smashed one of the creepy crawlers with it. The phone it was next to had fallen off the hook, its cord trailing over the desk, and its dial tone droning.

"Get away!" Cindy exclaimed, swatting a leech off of a paper with her pistol. She lifted it, and called out, "This says BF—ack!"

Another leech hopped onto her shoulder, and she flew into a frenzy to get rid of it. Kevin, who was the closest, took care of it for her.

I should have moved. I should have noticed the proximity of the grate. Instead, I was too distracted by Cindy, and as a result, the creaking of the grate came from a few feet to the right of me.

I broke into a mad run to get away from it, but forgot that the floor was covered in water. As a result, I slipped, and crashed to the floor, smacking my arm off the island table. The phone book tumbled down alongside me. I hissed in pain, felt the water soaking into my clothes and hair, and heard the Leech Man coming for his new victim.

"Shit!"

I scrabbled on the floor to get up, all the while trying to put the pain in my arm in the back of my mind. My hand hit the phone book, and something else on top of it…

I yelped as the leech crawled onto my hand, and after a sharp bite, began to drink.

The moment after, Kevin fastened his hands under my shoulders, and pulled up.

"HEY!" Cindy yelled, kicking the table to get the greater adversary's attention while I knocked the leech off of my hand. She placed an open blood pack on the table, which the Leech Man dove for, knocking whatever was on it to the floor to shatter.

Even after we closed the door to the doctors' station and locked it, I still felt like a fool. I used the disinfectant on the top of my hand. Cindy offered me a blue pill, which I gratefully took with the knowledge that my body had acquired quite a few bruises.

There wasn't much to say. An apology from me was accepted, and that was that. It was up to me to learn to keep my head. There wasn't scorn on my friends' faces, rather disappointment. It was a far cry from some of my previous actions.

"I'll check my locker," I stated to change the subject.

On my way over there, I stumbled across a rather disturbing discovery: Dr. Onegin, a mutual acquaintance I'd had with Hursh, was splayed across the small couch on his stomach, a gash in his back. His lungs were crushed, the back of his head caved in. I identified his features from his head being up on the couch's arm, and shook my head. This place was turning more and more from a hospital into a slaughter house.

Some of the lockers were protruding open, their contents stolen. The police's forced entry weapon, a bloody crowbar, was lying on the floor before the row.

I had turned and called, "Careful! There's another body in here!"

They nodded, and I turned to check my locker.

It was a complete and utter invasion of my privacy, not that I could have done anything about that at that point. The door was practically been torn off, the few pictures inside torn beyond recognition from frantic searching. All that had remained were the clothes, and they had been rumpled every which way.

I bent down to pick up the crowbar when a hoarse moan erupted from the nearby.

I turned to see an undead police man rising from behind the table, his back soaked with blood. Kevin aimed his gun to fire at him, but the look of shock on his face indicated that it was empty. So instead, he resorted to pistol whipping the undead officer, which sent him backwards a few steps.

Crowbar and clothes in my hands, I started forwards. There wasn't anything else worth finding on the first floor, so it was time to leave.

"Cindy, call the elevator!"

She had a blue herb clenched tightly in her hands. Nodding, she briskly went over to hit the button.

Taking care to keep my eyes averted from Onegin's remains, I joined her inside of the elevator, which she was holding open with a hand in front of the doors. Kevin caught up, and the doors closed with a quick pressing of a button just before the zombie was able to stumble inside.

Kevin's eyes met mine. I sighed before putting on a stronger expression. He was right earlier; I had to stop taking this out on myself.

"All right, I'm guessing from these two papers that we have to add these four sets of digits to this one set right here. I still have the pencil from my uniform." Cindy held out the papers as she spoke. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that the only text on the secondary paper was BF2, a plus sign, and the four-digit number set.

"So, we figure out which one to use. The elevator predestination room is on the floor below," I stated.

"Seeing as how we don't have a calculator, and we still have to check the rest of this floor, we should probably split up. Two of us can work on the numbers and input them," Kevin paused, looking at me before he added, "Depending on how many areas there are on this floor, someone should check them. The other two won't be too far off."

"Then come with me," I responded, "There's really only one other room to check, and it has no ventilation ducts. I'd rather steer clear of the reposing room."

Kevin looked like I'd handed him a bar of solid gold.

The elevator doors opened, and I stepped out to point at the door on our left. "There's the predestination room."

To make sure that the room we as doctors had learned to both dread and accept was locked, I tried the bloodied handle after wrapping my sleeve around my hand. It thankfully didn't budge.

A disquieting pounding sounded off in the distance, the hallway ending in the door that only my keycard could open.

"Oh, fun part," Kevin commented with a groan, heading down.

Cindy stayed at my side as the pounding grew louder with the distance gained. I felt her brush up against me. "Do you think the others are all right?" She asked.

I thought for a moment. "If they have adapted to their environments like we have, they are. I personally believe that they have the potential to do so."

She nodded with a small smile.

A sharp clang rang out, and a zombie police man exited from behind the chain link fence guarding a small storage area.

A nicely-aimed kick by Kevin knocked him back inside, and gave me room to swipe my card in the reader.

While Cindy and Kevin busied themselves with adding the numbers, I changed my clothes. I wished that I had placed more practical clothing in my locker, seeing as how a dress shirt and pants didn't hold much difference from my previous outfit.

Once I finished, I grabbed the red herb off the ground. We had the ingredients needed for an anti-virus pill, but what stopped me from creating them was the unpredictable nature of our plight.

"Okay, that's it. We have to put these codes in one at a time, don't we?" Kevin's question made me want to refuse to answer, although that wasn't a choice.

I nodded, and he grunted. " much as I'm grateful that ol' Leechy won't be breathing down my back here, I think you should stay."

The embarrassment in the office replayed in my mind's eye, and I resisted the urge to slap a hand to my head. Instead, I settled for agreeing with him.

Kevin handed me a blood pack. "Meet us in the second basement."

"Will do." I moved to take the pack out of his hand, but he held it tightly. It dawned on me how large the separation might have been.

Kevin gave me a salute by placing two fingers to the side of his head. "See ya soon, Doc."

I laughed in spite of the situation at his overt foolishness.

After the door closed behind him, Cindy lingered still. She appeared as if she wanted to say something to me.

Oddly enough, rather than speaking, she placed her lips against my cheek.

Heat exploded inside of me from the kiss. I took her hand for a moment, and then it slipped away.

I forcibly stopped the loneliness from overtaking me as I carefully made my way through the rest of the room. The body of a nurse greeted me as I rounded the bend. The fact that it was stirring caused me to move more quickly.

The waste liquid disposal room beyond the door was the perfect breeding ground for the leeches. They crawled around (and possibly swam in) the barrels of waste fluid. They had been a great thorn in the side of the hospital recently due to the number of patients we had lost. I guessed from the allegation memo was that their failure to be removed had been caused by a dispute between the hospital and Umbrella.

In the low light, I spotted a box of handgun rounds within a coiled rubber cable. Remembering the events at the nurses' station, I chose to fire on it first. A leech within in turn let out a cry. After taking care to fire one or two more shots, I grabbed the rounds, and reloaded. The squishy crawling noises continued to echo all around me, and I hoped to not remain much longer in the room.

After clearing the stairs, I thought twice before hopping into the small channel of water. Instead, I braced my shoulder against a stack of boxes, and pushed them in. A strong metal rod followed. It wasn't much of a bridge, but it would have to do.

After carefully picking my way across, I leapt onto the adjoining path, and landed with a grunt. The body of a doctor sprawled on his stomach greeted me. I slowly came toward the body, but found I didn't need to worry over it reanimating; the leeches had done away with his supply of blood.

As I came closer, my footsteps uneven, I saw a glint of silver on the ground near his hand. I didn't want to cut the body to pieces with bullet holes, so instead I chose to flip it over with the crowbar. A few leeches still clung to the body, and I dispatched them with my melee weapon. Once they were finished, I realized just who the owner of this shell was.

He was Dr. Martin Skinner, the chief of staff. Lying just before his hand was a key ring with only one key on it. Picking it up, I found that BF2 was engraved on it.

I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to hack into my boss's body, but resisted it. I had respected this man for years; he'd always made sure the hospital (until recently, it seemed) had been running efficiently, its staff members taken care of. I had to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Instead, I resorted to turning my back on him. I wasn't going to deface him further, but that didn't mean I didn't have some amount of rage bottled in me, whether or not Skinner deserved having it aimed in his direction.

XXXXXX

I slowly stepped out of the elevator onto the second basement floor. It appeared to be a clone of the floor above, with one door directly before me, and another at the end of the hall.

"Kevin? Cindy?" I called.

When no response came, I tried the door. It gave easily.

Beyond the door was an abandoned laboratory. It was a complete mess. Papers were flung on the floor. Books were strewn all over the desks. Lab equipment either hung uselessly from the ceiling, or lay in disarray all over the room.

The remains of a few zombies lay on the floor, their brains splattered on the tile. About two were in casual clothes, while another pair was clad in lab coats.

Rage built up inside of me, and that time, I lacerated the bodies. I broke the jaw of the first, and watched the blood run down his chin onto his already-stained coat. I barely resisted the urge to retch at the sight. I smashed the hands of the second, and stared at the harshly displaced digits that had been her fingers. Their black and blue marks were frighteningly gruesome.

The crowbar slipped out of my hand, and clattered to the floor while I fell to my knees. My hands wrapped around my throat for a moment before I threw up.

Moments passed, and I knew that I had to move.

I cleaned myself up, rose, and walked to the door, my entire body shaking.

Somehow I managed to get it open.

"George! You made it!" Kevin dashed over to me.

At what was most likely a dreadful expression I wore, his face fell, and he looked ready to ask me if I was all right.

"Thank God!" Cindy exclaimed as she came over. She openly grinned at me, but that grew strained upon seeing how I looked.

"What's wrong? You look so pale."

I shook my head. "It's overwhelming to see this laboratory, even after all the documentation about it."

The two gave me understanding looks. Under them, they looked ready to say something.

Kevin held out a much-rumpled paper to me. "You're not alone. This says that not only the hospital was in on the business, but the police station was as well." His was strained, and anger flashed in his eyes.

"What?"

"The Chief…He was bribed to turn a blind eye to what was happening," Cindy supplied, her voice quivering.

I blinked for a moment. Before I could even consider absorbing this, I laid a hand on Kevin's shoulder, and whispered, "I'm so sorry."

He looked ready to snap at me, but reconsidered. Instead, he replied in a controlled tone, "Thanks."

I looked past him to inspect the area, which consisted of a control panel in a small hallway in which we were standing. The door at the end, closed at the moment with a grate directly above, had a room full of shelves beyond it. The second room was plainly displayed by the glass window.

Cindy saw me looking around, and explained, "That panel controls the temperature in the next room. Kevin and I were thinking that if we could trap the Leech Man inside, we can burn him. The problem is, we don't have a blood pack anymore."

I smiled, pulling out the blood pack. "You're in luck. I'll place it inside."

"I'll go with you in case something happens," she replied, "Kevin, will you operate the controls?"

"You sure you don't want me to go?" He asked.

She shook her head. "No, I'll be fine. You held him—it—back when I helped to input the code again. Now, I'll repay you for that."

After a moment, he nodded. "Okay."

I raised my hand to push the door open, but it slid aside for me.

"It's hard to imagine that we'll be rid of this abomination," I commented while dumping the blood onto the floor.

"I'm sorry if this sounds too optimistic, but we'll have that at the very least." She replied, wiping the sweat off her face with the back of her hand.

She didn't smile that time. She looked tired, her expression substantially darkened. I probably looked the worse, but we still conversed with one another.

A harsh banging sounded, and the grate swung open.

Kevin glanced up for a moment, and seemed to eye up the creature, holding his ground. I took the time to stand, and walk away from the pack. Cindy, holding what seemed to be of all things, a crutch, stood before me. I took care to pull my pistol out, and wished that I hadn't discarded my crowbar.

When his gaze fell, I knew that the monster's attention was diverted in our direction. We shuffled forward with precision.

The door slid open. Even though we had been prepared for it, we were still jumped.

The Leech Man completely ignored us as he slogged by, bent down, and began to drink.

We broke into a run, my eyes focused on Cindy's blonde hair waving back and forth. As long as I had stayed close to that, I was fine.

Before I knew it, the door closed behind us, and Kevin slammed his hand down on the button, whooping in victory.

Cindy and I, however, were more focused on catching our breaths. I almost threw my arms around her, having felt a little closer to her from before, but I resisted the urge.

"Kevin!" I called out hoarsely, "Is there any way to tone down the temperature?"

He stared at me for a little while, but realization dawned on his face afterwards. "Yeah, hang on."

I didn't expect what was beyond that door. Those infernal leeches had been destroyed, leaving the husk they had inhabited bare. Its face…It was that of my dear friend, Hursh, his eyes and mouth gaping wide open, creating a mask of a man betrayed.

My head hit the wall behind me as tears began to flow. For that moment, I felt guilt wash over me. It didn't mattered that he was already dead, or that I hadn't had a single chance at preventing his death. For just that while, it was almost as if he had been slain by my hand.

"Oh my God…" Cindy whispered.

I dropped my hands to see her examining the body, her hands clasped together. She turned to me, a regretful look on her face. "I had you…I…I didn't know!" Tears streamed down her face at her own guilt, although it was as needlessly attached to her as mine was to myself.

That time, I embraced her, if only for a moment to show that I had placed no blame on her.

"Jesus Christ…I'm so sorry..." Kevin hung his head in shame, his fists clenched.

I went over to him, and sighed. "You do know I don't hold you responsible for this."

He looked up after I said that, locking his gaze with mine. "Thanks, but that will only go so far."

I wanted to say that I had knew, but I decided against it. Instead, I held out my hand. "Then allow me to accompany you the rest of the way."

After a pause, he took it. "All right."

The tone soon afterwards shifted from miserable to dark.

Grimacing, I had swiped the card in its reader, unlocking the door at the end of the hallway. We had found it on Hursh's body, and speculated the leeches had absorbed it as they had absorbed their host, but it still didn't take away the bitter taste in my mouth. I was through with this place, having seen far more of its hidden side than I would ever have desired.

The room beyond was equipped with supplies, much to our satisfaction. A shelf held a first-aid spray, and a potted green herb had been against the far wall. A barrel held two sets of handgun rounds.

Kevin laid claim to the rounds immediately, having found a burst handgun in the laboratory inside a drawer that he'd had to force open. The weapon still made my skin crawl. Even he hated holding it, choosing to holster it most of the time. Cindy told me that she had found the crutch in the same room. Cane and carrot for the test subjects, despicable!

The most uplifting feature of the room was an outboard, its gas gauge full, sitting on a path of water leading to the sewer. It was chained to a spare fuel supply, and the key I had found released the lock. My misgivings about Dr. Skinner, however, had yet to be dismissed. I both liked and loathed the fact that we would never have learned the entire story of the hospital's downfall.

Cindy took the chance to mix the three herbs we collected.

After we finished checking to make sure we were ready, we climbed into the boat, taking the fuel supply as a precaution.

Kevin tugged hard on the cord, and we were off.

The sewer sped by in a blur, and I leaned back to relax somewhat. I didn't consider this a gateway to freedom, rather a short break. After all that had happened, I would have been unintelligent to think otherwise. Kevin wiped his brow with the back of his hand, while Cindy hugged her bent knees to herself.

I had thought well for the situation, for before we knew it, a gigantic wall of leeches grew large in our path as we neared it.

Fear seized us. We grabbed whatever we could, and jumped off the boat, landing in the cold water. We watched in horror as the boat smashed into the wall, and went flying. Flames started from the engine, burning the leeches. Though the fire got rid of them, it left us without transportation.

Needless to say, that was the least of our problems, as a gigantic leech rose from the flames. Water spewed from its tree trunk of an esophagus, while it bounced forward on its over-sized bulb of a body.

The jump was difficult to recover from, given the fact that it was off a vehicle moving at well over fifty miles an hour.

Kevin was the first to get up. He was holding the fuel source. "Well, looks like we woke up Mama!"

He hadn't time to say much else before the massive leech angled itself parallel to the floor, and pushed itself toward us with high speed.

Cindy jumped up at the sight, and I stood bolt upright.

The next moment, the leech's body collided with the three of us, sending us to the floor.

Water filled my lungs. My hands pushed down onto the concrete floor beneath as I heaved my body up, gasping for air and violently coughing.

Kevin's hand waved before me. "Back up!"

Cindy grabbed onto my shoulder. "We have to go!"

I was ready to protest against leaving Kevin by himself until I saw that he had deposited the fuel source on the floor, and was running back. The leech, meanwhile, reeled its esophagus backward.

It seemed like we couldn't move fast enough. Acid spouted from the leech's body rained after us. It sizzled on the water as it landed.

"Cover your ears!"

I did so just as the shot rang out, followed by the explosion.

It was far off, but it still shook the area. At least the container was rather small.

The leech squealed in pain, and we turned to see it thrashing before much more slowly trying to come after us.

Kevin opened fire on the weakened creature with his burst handgun. Cindy and I followed suit with our own guns. I tried to ignore the soreness in my chest and shoulders when we were so close to the goal.

The shots struck true, but the leech still came. It drew closer and closer still, causing us to back up even when it was still a decent distance away..

It seemed endless. Cindy's gun clicked empty first, and mine was second. For a few nervous moments, we relied upon Kevin. Running up to the leech and attacking it with a melee would was uncalled for, given that it still spewed acid.

At long last, the leech surrendered. It lay on the floor in a repulsive mess.

We panted hard, glancing around at one another. Kevin finally relaxed his grip, and placed the gun at his belt. He spent a few moments waving out his strained hands. The scene became substantially darker as the fire began to burn itself out from the amount of water that had been kicked up.

Words weren't needed as we picked our way past the animal. Kevin drew a breath, grinned, and ran on ahead. Cindy turned and gave me a small smile before continuing. I returned it, although I felt half ready to curl into a ball from the pain, exhaustion, and negative emotions.

My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!