Eventually, the pain in Claire's arm died down a little. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She was far beyond the age where she cried from being hurt; she was mostly crying out of anger. She kicked herself mentally for being so careless. She mustered a look at the bite on her arm.

The zombie hadn't managed to take a piece out, but it had bitten hard enough to leave a ring of teeth marks on her flesh. Several of the gouges had long scrapes that had been made when she pushed the zombie off of her. These were speckled with blood, and the bite marks themselves where oozing with it. Claire grimaced; any closer to her wrist and it might have severed a large vein. She wished for the First Aid Spray that was unfortunately sealed behind two blast doors and a mass of walking corpses.

Claire got to her feet and took a deep breath. She regained herself, then pulled her weapons out of the security box. She was short a magazine, but lost no ammunition. She took her Beretta in her hand and proceeded to jog back to the prison gate. At last, it had stopped raining.

As she entered the prison gate yard, she dropped two zombies to be safe. She once again took a look at the latch with the engraving on it. She slipped the emblem out of her pocket and stuck it in the hole, then gave it a tap with her fist. The lock simply sprang open. Claire pulled the latch, then pushed with all of her might on the door. It opened a few feet, and Claire slipped through.

Claire now stood on a long metal bridge. A hundred feet below her, waves crashed over jagged rocks. It appeared that the prison was built on a small rock off of the main island. Something had taken a gouge out of the bridge near the middle, and a jeep was balanced precariously on the edge. Judging by the burnt edges, it might have been a bomb or a missile. Claire opted to take the service catwalk along it's side. She hopped over the railing near the jeep, and carefully walked up to it.

"I swear to God if this thing collapses..." Claire thought to herself. She peered inside the jeep, looking for a heavier weapon. Nothing stuck out, so Claire leaned over and checked the glove box. She remembered when Leon told her to look in one back in Raccoon City as they tried to escape in a squad car. Inside it had been a gun. She didn't find one in the jeep, but there was another box of nine millimeter rounds. Claire took these and left the jeep quickly; she had heard a metallic creak under her feet.

At the end of the bridge was a staircase built into the cliff alongside the bridge. Something had exploded at the base of them, for fire was burning on the ground. Claire hopped over and began to climb up the stairs. She felt the bite on her arm. The bleeding had stopped, but it was still hurting. The blood had dried and formed a nasty red smear on her flesh. A nauseating thought washed over Claire. What spread the virus? Leon and herself had been injured plenty of times at the hands of these creatures, but they never succumbed to cannibalism. Perhaps the virus only infected a certain percentage of live people, and had a better chance to infect the dead. Claire had no idea; she didn't exactly do well in biology at school.

Claire reached the top of the stairs. Two zombies were at the top, each one was roaming on the paths of an intersection. In the distance, Claire saw a well lit building. Claire decided to go left, towards the building. She shot down the zombie in front of her and ignored the one on her right. It stood sentry in front of a metal gate and a door. She ran along a wall. Two more zombies were in front of her. She shot one down, and ran out of ammo. She hadn't had the time to reload her spare magazine, and now both were empty. Eying the low stone railing on her left, Claire had an idea. She drew her knife and put her back to the wall. The zombie shuffled over and reached to grab her. Claire pressed the blade against its throat, keeping it's deadly teeth away from her body. Her other arm pushed against its chest. She forced it backward and shoved it against the railing. It teetered against it, trying to regain it's balance. Claire stepped back and delivered a kick to it's chest. The zombie fell over the rail, and Claire her a faint 'splat' as it hit the rocks below.

She stuck her empty gun in her jeans and slid the knife back into the sheath, then drew her twin guns in both hands. She jogged along the wall and up a set of stone stairs. Going through the gate at the top, she found herself in a small courtyard with a cobblestone path.

"Classy..." thought Claire as she jogged down the path. The building was an elegant looking palace, and a fresh change of scenery for Claire, who had had enough of the grimy prison. The front of the palace even had a low row of hedges and flower bed. As she proceeded, another dog bounded out of the hedges. This one wasn't as mutilated as the one in the prison, but it still showed signs of the virus. It's fur was spotted, revealing it's muscles, and it foamed at the mouth. Claire was more prepared this time. She lined up the dog in her sights before it spotted her, and pulled the guns' triggers'. The burst of gunfire struck the dog and shattered the cobblestone as it turned it's attention on her. The dog yelped and fell over. She fired again and it stopped moving with a spray of blood and another yelp. She stepped over the corpse, but then hesitated. The doors of the palace were in front of her, but she didn't think she should enter yet. It might benefit her to look around outside. Steve had mentioned there was an airport. Maybe she could find it right away.

She walked past the doors to the palace and left the courtyard through another gate in front of her. On the other side of the gate was a stairway which led to a large pool. The water was pitch black, and Claire couldn't see the bottom. Jutting out into the pond was a small platform with a pedestal on it. On it was an inscription of a wheel, and a slot to slide something in. Claire ignored it, but didn't put it out of her head completely. She checked underneath stairs. Nothing was there, but there was a map hanging on the wall. It was labeled 'PALACE'. Claire took it and headed back to the entrance of the palace and went through it's doors.

The first room was a richly decorated entry lobby. In front of her was a large reception desk and a staircase along the wall. First, Claire checked the reception desk. A computer was on. There was nothing else. She tried the first door in the lobby. It was a bathroom. It would have been nicely decorated, but the stall doors were smashed, and several of the sinks had been severed from the wall. Water had covered the tiled floor about a quarter of an inch deep, and continued to leak from the open pipes. Claire immediately spotted a first aid cabinet. She hurried over to it and opened it, then breathed a sigh of relief. There was a can of First Aid Spray. She quickly applied it to the bite on her arm. Claire turned her head and dug her teeth into her shirt and arm.

"God, that hurts like a bitch!" Claire's head screamed. The bite felt like it was on fire as the medicinal spray was applied to it. It took a minute for it to die down. She took a small role of bandages from the cabinet and wrapped the wound. Working clumsily, she knotted the gauze and tightened it with her teeth, then cut the trailing end off with her knife. Already, her arm was feeling better.

Claire left the bathroom and tried the other door, but it was locked with no visible key hole. Claire tried her other options; she walked up the stairs. It was odd, she thought, that this place was almost untouched, aside from the bathroom. The prison had been bombed, and there had been gunshot holes peppering the walls.

The stairs turned into a landing. Claire checked the door on her left, up a another small set of stairs. It was locked. An ornate silver crest lined the door. She tried the other door, and found it to be unlocked.

She was in a a secretary's office. She carefully checked it for undead, but there was none. Claire holstered her guns. She sat on a sofa along the wall. She took out the boxes of handgun rounds and took the spare clip from her back pocket, then ejected the empty one from her handgun. She slid each round into the clips until they were full. She used up one box, and a quarter of another. She slid a fresh magazine into her gun, then stuck the spare in her back pocket.

Claire lied back on the couch. She was slowly drying off, but she still felt cold. She had been in this building for not more than 10 minutes, and she was already stuck.

"There's always that door back at the top of the cliffs," she reminded herself. She could check out the other place; maybe she would have more luck. She rolled over on the couch and thought about her next move. The night's exhaustion was starting to set in. Her clothes were heavy with water and mud, and the constant adrenaline spikes in her body coupled with the lack of sleep was taking it's toll. Now that she had found a comfortable couch, Claire didn't want to get up.

However, she knew that she had to keep moving. Claire lifted her head. As she got up, she saw something beneath a set of drawers. She got up and reached underneath. She pulled out an ID card. It was a security card. Claire looked at the mugshot and read the name aloud.

"James Astor."

She flipped it over. Below the magnetic strip was a list of numbers and letters: NTC0394. She stuck the card in her vest pocket with her lighter. Now Claire turned her attention to the door in front of her. It looked right at place in the palace, but it almost seemed to gaudy. On the front was a large gold plate. Indented on the front were the hollows of two handguns. She tried the knob, and wasn't surprised to find it locked.

"More Umbrella bullshit," she muttered. "Fine, whatever."