Shit. I really screwed the pooch on this one. He had cut and ran right when his team needed him the most. One moment longer and Alpha Team wouldn't be stranded in the Arklay Forest, with god-knows-what nipping at their heels. But if Brad had waited any longer, he would have been toast.

Brad forced the Huey into another banking turn over the jagged treetops, hoping to catch a glimpse of his teammates through the dense foliage. Just behind him was the looming estate, a sprawling complex that covered far more ground than Chris' maps had indicated. When Brad had passed over it the first time, he even noted a helipad between the main building's rear face and what looked like a large, heavily landscaped garden or cemetery. There was also some sort of outbuilding, maybe serving as a guest house or the like.

He keyed his mic again, hoping that maybe this time they would hear him on their radios. "Vickers to Alpha, Vickers to Alpha. Do you copy?" No one responded. In fact, no one was responding back at the station either. He cursed again. If only there was some way to signal Alpha. Working under the logical assumption that they had made it to the estate, Brad could just pick them up on the helipad. That is, if he didn't run out of fuel first. At the absolute maximum, there were two and a half hours of fuel left in the old bird before he would have to turn around, less if he kept flying as aggressively as he had.

You're assuming any of them are still alive. Maybe they didn't even make it past the clearing, a small voice in the back of his mind chimed in. No, he told himself, they have to have made it. Either way, he wasn't giving up on his team because of odds. Especially not since their predicament was entirely his fault.

It wasn't long before Chris decided that Spencer's affinity for odd decorations was easily matched by an obscene love of hallways. The particular one Chris found himself in had a wood floor that groaned and squeaked with each step, making him continually grimace as he gave up trying to tiptoe in combat boots. Instead he moved slowly, listening for anything unusual over the painfully loud sounds of his own progress.

The hall widened into a room dominated by a surprisingly plain set of stairs. Before moving up to the second floor, Chris deemed it wise to check the door next to the stairs, hoping to find anything of use. Maybe there would be more notes on this virus of Umbrella's, or even better, he thought, a pack of smokes. Chris had left his behind, and some nicotine would help steady his nerves against the eerie atmosphere of the mansion. The knob turned smoothly, and the door came unlatched with a soft snick. Chris eased it open.

There was an angry shout from inside the room and something heavy slammed down into Chris' shoulder. He reeled back in surprise and pain, letting out a yelp before his boot caught something and he landed on his ass. Chris brought his Beretta to bear but stopped himself when he saw who stood over him, holding a bedpost like a club. It was Rebecca, Bravo Team's medic.

Rebecca Chambers had heard the footsteps slowly approaching from outside the small study. Thinking that another ghoul must have detected her, she froze immediately, hoping it was just wandering aimlessly and would soon go away. But she could hear it, now right outside the door. Rebecca's grip tightened on the makeshift club she had "borrowed" from another room when her Beretta had run out of ammo. She didn't know if they could open doors, but she wasn't taking any chances. The doorknob moved, and she raised the club to fend off the impending attack.

The door swung slowly, revealing a tall figure blocking her exit. Adrenaline now pumping through her veins, she charged with the best battle cry she could muster and swung with all her might. The club missed the ghoul's head, where Rebecca had aimed, but nonetheless stunned her attacker, knocking him back a few steps before he clumsily toppled over backwards. Rebecca raised the club to finish the job when she realized the man was not in fact a ghoul, and was wearing the green and black uniform of a STARS member. Her adrenaline-fueled rage quickly faded to embarrassment as she recognized Chris Redfield, Alpha's point man, his wide eyes staring back at her in bewilderment.

"Hell of a swing," he managed to joke shakily as she scrambled to help him up.

"Oh! Oh my god, I'm so sorry! I thought you were one of them!" Rebecca exclaimed, noting internally that she had almost bashed in the skull of the only friendly person she had seen since making it to this strange place.

Chris straightened himself out, reholstering his gun. "It's okay. I'm a little jumpy too. How did you get here?"

They closed themselves in the room before Bravo's medic recounted how the helicopter had begun to lose power, forcing Ed to set it down quickly. Then she explained how they had been chased from their downed helicopter by a pack of wild dogs, and how she and Enrico had made it to the mansion, hopping a wrought-iron fence before managing to force open one of the side doors. She and Enrico had been separated when a group of the mansion's undead residents burst into a hallway between them, forcing them in different directions.

"And Chris, I found out what's wrong with the people here. There's an underground lab where they make viral weapons, and you'll never guess who owns it."

"The Umbrella Corporation," he stated matter-of-factly, catching Rebecca off guard.

"How did you know?"

"Educated guess. Did you find out anything else about what they're doing here?" he asked.

"Boy, did I ever," Rebecca replied enthusiastically. She grabbed a thick, blue folder from a bookshelf full of similar folders, slapping it down on the desk next to them. "This folder has just about everything on the virus. They call it the T-Virus. It's a viral strain similar to hemorrhagic fever that is capable of cross-species transmission and has a nearly one-hundred percent infection rate, which is almost unheard of! It's rather amazing, actually. The sequence of the Three-UTR is entirely different from any other RNA I've seen before. It must have been developed from the BDBV strain, and shows signs that they used some bits and pieces from a picornavirus serotype, or an enterovirus. Either way, they would have had to-"

Chris held up a hand, looking a little amused and very confused. "You lost me at the thing about sequencing."

Dammit, she thought, I shouldn't have gone off on a tangent. Now he's gonna think I'm some kind of virus nerd. "Sorry, I've just never seen something so heavily engineered before. They have to have been working on this for decades."

"You said something about how it's transmitted?"

She sighed. "Yeah. Looks like it can be aerosolized, but it isn't designed for that. Mostly it's going to be by contact – bites, scratches, that sort of thing."

He seemed relieved. After a pause, he inquired, "How do you know all that stuff about viruses?"

"I didn't originally plan to be an EMT or anything like that. I was going to get a degree in virology, but couldn't afford the schooling. Spent a lot of time at the library instead, hoping to get there eventually."

He raised an eyebrow, then grinned. "Good work. C'mon, we've got to get going. Most of Alpha Team made it, and are somewhere around here. Jill and I got separated a while ago, and Barry and Wesker are supposed to be checking out the second floor. You still have your sidearm?"

"Yeah, but both my magazines are empty."

"And I'm down to my last seven rounds. Guess we'll just have to be careful."

They headed out and started up the stairs, Rebecca now a little more confident that she had someone else with her. It was her first job as part of the STARS teams, and it was good to have one of the more experienced members leading the way instead of fumbling along by herself. Maybe we will make it out of here alive.