Chapter Three

The back of the park was all dense trees lining winding dirt pathways, a once haven for city dwellers looking for a little nature on their lunch breaks. The occasional zombie lurched over the fences towards Jill, and she put each of them down with a shot to the head.

She'd been back this way before, briefly, until she'd run against the locked gate that resisted all efforts from her lock picks. There had been a corpse in U.B.C.S. gear on the ground before, but it had since wandered off. The lock that had once given her so much trouble now lay on the ground in pieces, apparently bent and snapped by something. Maybe Wesker had had some bolt cutters on him.

She pushed the creaking gate open, her gun up and at the ready. This was new territory, and she wasn't sure what to expect. Knowing there was an Umbrella facility nearby only added to her tension.

All that time she'd been hunting Raccoon for evidence against Umbrella, sniffing around for the elusive underground laboratory, and she'd never heard anything about this place. The abandoned factory on the outskirts of Raccoon had always been just another sign of deserted industry, another business muscled out of town by the tyranny of Umbrella. As far as she remembered, the police had never needed to sweep the place for squatters or chase off vandals. The property had always seemed quiet, unremarkable. Now she knew why.

Umbrella had its own ways of dealing with intruders.

The Arklay river had carved a small canyon between the park and the factory. An old rope bridge connected the two sides, many of its boards rotted and broken. It looked about as sturdy as a three story straw hut, but she didn't have much choice if she wanted to cross that gap.

A blond shadow shifted near the factory entrance. Wesker had folded himself into a dark spot near the factory door, though he showed no interest in actually entering. If he had made it across, then she could too. She gingerly took one step out on to the bridge, and when the rope held, she kept going.

She was about halfway across when Wesker called out, "Jill, stop!"

She wouldn't have listened, except she noticed the way his head was tilted down, like he was looking at something underneath the bridge. A tentacle lashed upwards in a shower of splinters, whipping through the air a foot from her face. She backpedaled, narrowly avoiding the strikes of three more tentacles. Goddamn it, how did this asshole keep catching up to them? Could it teleport? Had it been hiding under the bridge?

Something big landed on the bridge behind her, the impact swinging the contraption wildly from side to side. She stumbled and turned. The Nemesis, or course, what else would it be? It straightened from its crouch, its tentacles writhing in agitation.

Jill backed away, thinking quickly. Should she jump? There was deep water right below her, and the canyon was only about twenty feet deep. She might survive the landing. If Nemesis jumped after her, though, she'd be a sitting duck out in the water.

Nemesis arched Its back, roaring at the sky. Jill ran up against one of the gaps in the bridge, and could back up no farther. She could see only one solution, and it involved Nemesis hurtling down into the river below.

The B.O.W. was big, and strong, and fast, but it wasn't much smarter than a zombie. It always telegraphed its attacks, and it did the same this time, winding its arm back. She darted underneath It's lunge, slipping past its side as it struggled to hold its balance. Then, she thrust the heels of both palms into its side and shoved with all her might.

Between the unsteadiness of the bridge and the fact It was already off balance after missing Its swing, she had just enough strength to send the brute tumbling off the side of the bridge.

Nemesis wasn't finished. A tentacle swung up over the side, latched around Jill's ankle, and pulled her down off the bridge. She yelled in surprise and only just managed to grab hold of the bridge at the last moment.

She got lucky. Nemesis's tentacles might have been strong enough to hold up a human, but they couldn't support the B.O.W.'s own body weight. The appendage snapped off as soon as the Nemesis's full weight bore on it, and Nemesis went on plunging into the river. Jill sucked a strangled breath into her lungs, straining to hold on even as her arms and shoulders screamed. She had to pull herself up. She had to get up. She was not going to fall right into the Nemesis' arms. She had come too far to die now.

Footsteps, and creaking from the bridge above her. Wesker stepped into view, looking down at her with his blank face. Jill glared up at him, daring him to finish what he'd started on that nightmarish mission months ago. She didn't have the strength to hold herself up with one hand and pull her gun.

He knelt down, grabbed her wrist, and pulled upward, lifting her as if she weighed no more than a doll. She cried out, the movement wrenching her shoulder even more. He held her in the air for a little longer than he really needed to, long enough that she began to brace herself for the moment he would let her plunge down into the water. It was a shock when he set her down on solid planks, safe on the bridge.

They looked at each other, and neither one spoke, the rain leaving trails down their faces.

"Jill!" Carlos's voice, hollering from behind the gate.

Wesker stepped back from her, and then he ran back towards the factory, so quickly Jill could barely track his movements.

"This doesn't erase anything!" she screamed at his retreating back. And it didn't, it really didn't. He could save her life a hundred times, and it would never make up for everything he had taken from her.

Carlos came crashing through the gate, his assault rifle in hand, twigs caught in his hair.

"What?"

"Carlos. I'm glad you're safe," she said, and meant it, even if she was too tired to smile.

"Yeah, somehow. Listen, Jill, I just saw that big monster run this way. He was-"

"It's okay. He's in the river now."

"Whew. Close call, huh? Sorry I wasn't here to save the day." He jogged up to her, not minding the precarious swaying of the bridge at all.

Jill just shook her head, and finished crossing to the other side with Carlos just a step behind her.

"I saw your note. If they're really going to launch a missile at daybreak, then we don't have much time left. We need to find a way out of this place as soon as possible."

"You're right. We should split up and search for a way."

"Split up again? Are you sure? There's bound to be more zombies inside. And, that big guy might be lurking around."

"I'm sure."

Carlos had nearly gotten killed once by Nemesis, while trying to help her. She wasn't going to put him in extra danger if she didn't have to. She owed him that much, at least. He had saved her life by bringing her the cure to the T-Virus.

"Alright. And hey, be sure to watch out for that traitor Nikolai, OK?" Carlos made an aborted motion to reach out for her, then pulled his hand back. He shrugged the moment off with an attempt at his best cool guy pose—gun on shoulder, hand on hip, mouth quirked in a cheeky smile—and then he vanished through the front door.

"Take care of yourself," she called after him.

A chuckle rolled out of the shadows.

"You work fast," Wesker said, emerging from a hidden spot behind a rock.

"Shut up. It's not like that."

"Perhaps not. But it seems he would like it to be."

Jill shook her head. Carlos was just the flirty type. If he liked the look of a person, he'd hit on them, plain and simple.

"I admit, I'm surprised that you would work with any of Umbrella's mercenaries."

"None of this is their fault. They didn't even know what they were getting into. They're just more disposable pawns for Umbrella to throw at their experiments."

"Most of them, yes."

Jill reached for the door and paused, struck by a thought.

"Earlier, you said something about Nikolai's bonus. You know who he is?"

"He's one of the supervisors. A true Umbrella man, not just a hired gun. The company provides them incentives to dispose of anyone Umbrella might find...undesirable."

"How did you know I knew him?"

"I have my own eyes within the city. Most of them are dead by now, but a few are still feeding me information."

"You've been watching me."

"When you happen to cross my path."

She wanted to yell at him, but if she started now she wasn't going to stop. Besides, knowing him like she did, he might like that. They didn't have time for it.

"You're a creep, Wesker."

He looked, as always, utterly unrepentant.

Jill opened the factory door. Carlos was long gone, so it was safe for her and Wesker to enter. The factory was just as she'd been expecting: cold, steel, industrial. The only surprising thing about it was the newness of its interior, compared to the outside. It had been kept in working order alright.

At least, the facility had been in good shape before the outbreak. It was a mess now, but the red-brown splattered all over the walls and floor was blood, not rust. Naturally, the place was crawling with zombies. Jill and Wesker took their time wiping out the shambling horrors with careful head shots, barely pausing their conversation to fire.

"What kind of facility did you say this was?"

"Disposal. Zombies and mutants are only an unwanted byproduct of Umbrella's experiments, you must realize. There's no point in keeping them around. However, the bodies need special treatment to break them down in such a way that the virus is annihilated, too."

"How are they destroyed? Burning?"

"Too energy-costly. It's chemical baths, for the most part." Wesker looked around, as casual as a tourist in a chocolate factory. "They call it the 'dead factory,'" he said.

"Charming," Jill grunted. "So, what's your plan? Shove Nemesis in a chemical vat and watch him melt?"

"For a start."

They entered the first unlocked door they came across, which turned out to be some kind of office. It was a complete mess, drinks and papers everywhere, potted plants stuffed on top of filing cabinets, office supplies mingling with spare ammunition in little heaps on the desks. Jill walked around and helped herself to the supplies while Wesker laid a map out over the table.

On one of the desks, she found a diary from the 'dead factory's' manager. Wesker seemed preoccupied figuring out their course, so she read through a few pages. Immediately, she regretted the decision. Just skimming through it made her sick. How anyone could write so coldly about disposing of so many human corpses was mind-boggling to her. Umbrella had been dumping so many bodies here that their vats had gotten backed up. Just how many people had they killed? Were they experiments, trespassers, or just people who had gotten on Umbrella's bad side?

"Why does anyone ever work for Umbrella," she muttered to herself.

"Money. Power. The best biomedical research facilities in the country. A special kind of madness. Take your pick."

Jill huffed and thew the diary down.

"Here's what we want," Wesker told her, pointing out a room on the map. "This is the disposal chamber. We'll need a system disk to unlock it."

"And then we have to think of a way to lure It in there."

"That won't be difficult. We're the two things in this city that Nemesis wants most," Wesker said. A soft beep came from his pocket. He ignored it. "I think I have an idea where the disk might be. Feel free to explore while I go and get it."

Without another word, he left the map behind and exited the room. Jill narrowed her eyes at the abrupt exit. System disk, huh. Yeah. Sure. Always disappearing on her, that Wesker, even when they were supposed to be working together. She didn't like it. It reminded her too much of his behavior back in the Arklay mansion, and it was a complete 180 from the team captain who used to stick close to his team at all times. A Wesker out of sight was a Wesker free to get up to mischief.

She'd wait until he was in the middle of whatever he really wanted to do, and then she'd catch him in the middle of it. Wesker still had plenty of secrets to keep from her, and she was as determined as ever to suss them out. She gave him a five minute head start as she bent over the map, determining their route to the room they needed. As long as she was out, she might as well make sure their way was clear.

The way was not clear. She discovered this almost immediately, as the very first door she needed to pass was sealed tight with a metal shutter. The panel beside it was flashing warning messages about some kind of lock down.

"Goddammit, why does nothing ever work during an outbreak?" she hissed.

Calm down Jill, she told herself. Gotta find a way to unlock the door...or break through it. She would be happy to take the explosive option if it became viable. As she continued her exploration, she heard Wesker's voice drifting from a nearby control room.

"...missed quite a few things during your nap. There are two things you must be made aware of. One, in less than an hour, Raccoon City will be completely eradicated by a government launched missile. And two, in about ten minutes, an umbrella officer will be leaving town on a helicopter. If you are not on it, there will be no way for you to leave Raccoon city."

Jill's hands curled into fists. Wesker knew about an intact helicopter? Why the hell weren't they heading for it?

"You don't give a girl much time," A female voice replied to him, slightly distorted, as if over a speaker phone.

"Perhaps if you had not been fashionably late. The helicopter will be leaving from Banks Street. Take Anderson's hookshot with you to intercept it. He won't be needing it anymore."

All at once, the anger and the hope drained from Jill in a rush. Banks street was on the other side of town, past the roaring wall of fire. Even if they had had another rail car to hurtle past the fire on, they would never make it over there in time.

"And, Ada? Don't die. The g-virus sample is required."

Jill's eyes narrowed. That name, G-virus, struck a bell in her memory. About a month ago, she'd been startled awake at 3 am by a phone call from Chris. He'd babbled a lot of things about an underground laboratory, and a new virus. G, he had called it. Then he'd dropped the bombshell that he was running off to Europe to take Umbrella out at their source. The words had shaken her awake.

"Wait a minute. You're leaving? What about Raccoon? You just said there's another laboratory here!"

"They've got labs everywhere, Jill. We can't get anywhere in Raccoon. If we don't cut them off at the source, they're just going to keep coming."

"What if there's an accident in that lab, just like at Arklay? It could make a disaster a hundred times worse than what we saw at the mansion. You want to what, just, abandon Raccoon?"

"I'll leave that to you, Jill."

She hadn't been awake enough to talk him out of it. Hadn't found all the words she needed to yell at him. So Chris had left, slipped away in the middle of the night, and two whittled down to one. She hadn't even thought about the G-virus, specifically, not since that call. All her focus had been on the lab itself, and the web of corruption Umbrella had woven through all of the city's leaders.

The door opened beside her, and Wesker walked out. Jill folded her arms and leaned her hip against the wall, looking straight up into his shaded eyes. She made no effort to pretend she hadn't been standing outside and listening in.

"Find your disk?" she asked.

Wesker smirked at her. "I have what I need," he replied, and moved to brush past her.

"Trying to get your hands on another virus?" she spoke up suddenly, stopping him in his tracks. "You just don't learn, do you?"

"On the contrary, Jill. Lately I've learned a number of...interesting things." The way he said it put her on edge. It was like he was hinting at something.

And she really didn't like the look of his smile.