Sherry was in a very good mood when she walked into school on Monday. The previous Friday had been one of the best days she'd had in a long time—her father had taken her to the zoo, the theater, the mall, and the park, and then, at the end of the day, to her favorite restaurant. He'd been a little distracted throughout the day, but that hadn't mattered—what was important was that they'd spent so much time together.

Of course, he'd gone immediately back into work on Saturday, but she was hopeful that maybe, his spontaneous day off meant he was changing for the better. Maybe he'd even take her out again sometime soon!

That thought made her especially cheerful as she walked into school, her backpack slung painfully over her shoulder. On Friday, they'd briefly stopped by the school in the afternoon so her father could run in the office and pick up the paper telling her what assignments she'd missed, as well as all the textbooks that went with them.

Now she was toting them all back, the material of her bag straining to keep them in. Top heavy and awkward, she ambled her way past the empty classrooms to the cafeteria, where all the early arrivals were kept until their homeroom teachers arrived.

She was really in no hurry to get there and surround herself in the noisy chaos all the other children seemed to like so much, but as the cafeteria doors entered her sight, she was slightly relieved that she'd at least be able to sit down and take the damn backpack off.

Pushing on the door's crash bar, she stepped inside and immediately noticed that something was wrong.

The most obvious thing was that it wasn't nearly as loud as it usually was—on most days, all the voices twisted together into one indecipherable cacophony of sound. But today, all she could hear was an undercurrent of fast whispers, almost white noise, the wisp of air through moving lips.

The next thing only became apparent with a closer look. Everyone seemed different. No one had any energy. Nobody was running around or throwing things at each other—even the boys were behaving, for once. Everybody was just . . . sitting. Sitting and whispering.

This strangeness had had an equal affect on the teachers as well. Usually they paced and prowled, watching for anyone to misbehave just badly enough for them to punish. But today, they were all huddled in a group near the staff table, talking lowly amongst themselves and barely even watching them at all.

Even their computer teacher was over there with them, and Sherry had never known her to pass up any opportunities to deal out punishment. Any other day, she walked between the lunch tables, waiting for an excuse to assign detention. (She was a real bitch, in Sherry's opinion. That was a word she'd learned from Daddy, who'd used it once to describe someone he'd worked with a long time ago. She wasn't supposed to know it, though, so she only ever said it in her mind.)

Slowly, Sherry stepped further into the room and started in the direction of the sixth grade tables. She felt odd, somehow, like her footsteps were very loud and apart from the snippets of whispers her ears managed to catch.

"—I heard that—"

"—ripped them apart—"

"—I can't believe—"

"—don't understand how this could've happened—"

"—things like this don't happen here—"

"—aren't supposed to happen here—"

"—who would ever—"

"—didn't deserve—"

"—can't be happening, it just can't—"

"It'll be okay, Moira," she heard a girl say as she passed by the second grade table. The speaker wasn't a second grader, however—she looked more like a kindergartener.

"It'll be okay," she repeated, her arms wrapped around an older girl, who was crying. "Daddy'll catch them, you know he will . . ."

Sherry was frowning deeply by the time she reached the right table, as unnerved as she was confused. Her backpack hitting the ground with a resounding thump, she sunk down onto the bench and glanced over at her classmates. All the girls were sitting close together for once, the ones (the bitches) who were prissy and popular whispering to the ones who weren't.

Sherry almost asked what was going on, but she decided against it at the last second. She'd always been outcast even among the outcasts.

.

Sergei took a long, hard look Comrade Wesker's list. It was several pages long, with each name written out, then followed by a brief summary of the reasons they might be motivated to go on a crusade against the company.

Nothing really popped out at him. The majority of them were generic grievances that any company would have to deal with—employees fired under bad circumstances, someone passed over for a promotion or an increase in funding, and so on and so forth.

Still, he would ensure that every name on the list was thoroughly investigated. Even if they weren't responsible for this particular incident, there was no reason to let grudges fester.

For now, however, he was more curious about something else.

Dr. Birkin's mention of the Management Training Facility wasn't the first time Sergei had heard about it, exactly. He'd known, vaguely, that it was there, but he hadn't given it any thought, because to the best of his knowledge, it was abandoned, and had been for at least ten or so years.

He'd asked Birkin why he might think it could be the source, but all he'd done in reply was give a noncommittal shrug and say something about, "the old discarded experiments in the sewers."

"Comrade Wesker," Sergei said now, setting the list aside and looking up. Wesker's head tilted slightly in his direction, the only acknowledgement that he was listening.

"What do you know about the old Management Training Facility in Raccoon Forest?"

If he was surprised by the question, he didn't show it. "There isn't much to say. It's been closed for years."

"Were experiments conducted there?"

"Yes. Some by the students, but the majority by Dr. Marcus."

Sergei had heard that name before, but much like with the Training Facility, he didn't know many of the details. Marcus had been one of Umbrella's founders alongside Spencer and Ashford, but beyond that . . .

"He was the Director of the Facility," Wesker clarified.

"What type of experiments did he perform?"

"They all had to do with the Progenitor Virus. He used . . ." His lip curled, very slightly. " . . . leeches in most of them."

"Did the research go anywhere?"

Wesker gave the exact same noncommittal little shrug Birkin had the day before. "It contributed to Birkin's later work on T."

"And Marcus himself?"

"He was eventually . . . fired."

"Fired," he repeated. A word that didn't always mean simply let go.

"He had become a liability," Wesker said succinctly. "By 1988, he had become a reclusive, paranoid old man who killed assistants in droves and refused to share his research with the other scientists. He was holding the Company back. Mister Spencer, therefore, felt it prudent to . . . have the problem dealt with."

"What became of the Training Facility?"

"It had already been out of use by Company employees for ten years by then. The only one who used it was Marcus, and once he was no longer there, it was locked up and forgotten. I imagine it's falling apart by now."

"But during the time it was functioning—how were the experiments disposed of?"

"Badly," Wesker admitted. "There's a sewage plant connected to the facility—we dumped them in the water."

Sergei nodded and hmmed, running the pads of his fingers up and down the edge of his halberd. The skin grew thinner each time, until it finally snapped and a bead of blood slipped down the surface of the knife.

He stared at it. Imagined that there was a virus living in it, and that the sliver metal it rested on was actually water. One drop was all it took to contaminate an entire sea.

In his mind's eye, he could almost picture all the rotting bodies floating in the water, their fluids seeping out until it was thick and stagnant and oh so infectious.

Maybe that water was leaking somewhere. That wouldn't necessarily explain how so many humans had gotten access to it, but it was a start.

Flicking the blood off the halberd, he looked back to Wesker.

"I want you to make contact with your old friend, Doctor Birkin. I have a mission for you."

.

Monica supposed she liked Annette Birkin well enough. She was something of a bitch, one of those cutthroat career women, but finding fault with her for that would be like the pot calling the kettle black.

No, all in all, there were much worse bosses than Birkin, especially in a company like Umbrella. At least she didn't use her assistants in her experiments. (Dear, sweet Yoko was still recovering from that one unfortunate incident she'd been involved in.)

But today, Monica was very quickly running out of patience with the woman. They were all sealed up in this lab to work. They weren't here to make friends, or chitchat, or bitch all day long about their fucking husbands.

Their research had taken a backburner to Birkin's nonstop ranting about the other Doctor Birkin, who had apparently announced that he was divorcing her a few days ago. (Monica just couldn't imagine why.)

They'd been in the labs all day long and they'd only gotten a few hours worth of work done. Now Monica was tired and irritated and extremely pissed. The only thing keeping her sane was the thought of coffee, but as soon as she stepped into the break room, she found that, lo and behold, the pot was empty, as was the canister sitting next to the machine.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" she yelled, as loudly as she dared. Turning on her heels, she stomped over to the cabinets along the back wall and ripped one of them open. They weren't very full, but it still took some rooting around to find a new canister. It was a shitty brand, but whatever.

With it in hand, she started back towards the counter with the machine, glancing as she did so at a man who had appeared in the room while her back was turned.

He was standing over by another section of the counter, facing away from her, but she could tell from his hair that he was old, and unlike practically everyone else in the facility, he wasn't wearing a lab coat. Instead, he had on a brown business suit.

She didn't think it was someone she'd ever seen around before. Maybe he was a new hire.

Or, she mused as she scooped the ground coffee into the top of the machine, maybe he was here to see Doctor Birkin. Apparently, he liked getting rather than giving, if what Annette said was true.

Feeling a tiny bit of her annoyance and anger dissipate at the amusing thought, she closed the lid and hit the button. It always took a year for the thing to actually make the damn coffee, so all she could do was stand around and drum her fingers on the countertop.

Her eyes strayed, never focusing on any one thing. They glanced from the pot to the sugar and back again, then over onto the shiny surface of the stainless steel refrigerator.

Where they stayed.

At first, she wasn't really sure what she was seeing. The reflection wasn't a good one, but she could make out some of the room behind her, and see the silhouette of the man.

Which was moving. Strangely.

The first thing that she really registered was the arm. His right arm, hanging by his side, seemed to be getting longer and longer the more she watched. It eeked down, the fingers stretching out until they almost brushed the floor, the elbow joint having entirely disappeared.

Then she noticed that his clothes were . . . rustling. That was the only word she could come up with to describe the way they seemed to move. It caused the reflection to shimmer and ripple across the surface of the doors with increasing intensity, a continuous wet squelching providing an accompanying sound.

For a second, she just stared blankly. She had no idea what it was. Even after all the failed experiments and the BOWs she'd observed during her time with Umbrella, she'd never seen anything like it.

Nor, for that matter, did she have any idea how it got into the break room.

In fact, the only thing she really knew for certain was one thing: six feet away from a BOW with no protective glass was not somewhere she wanted to be.

Very, very slowly, Monica turned and walked out of the room, holding her breath each step of the way.

.

When she returned fifteen minutes later accompanied by both Birkins and an entire squad of guards who burst into the room with automatic rifles at the ready, the man was gone.

Where he had been standing, all they found was a thick layer of slime.

.

John knew that it was dangerous to be out walking the halls of the Mansion, but the knowledge that he was dying seemed to have dimmed his self-preservation instincts somewhat. After all, what was the worst that could happen to him? He'd be eaten by one of the escaped BOWs? At least that would be quicker, and he might even stay dead.

Of course, it wasn't absolutely certain that he was infected. That is, he didn't have any actual scientific proof. He hadn't taken the test yet.

But, as much as he tried to deny it, to hang on to some shred of hope, he already knew. His symptoms were textbook, identical to the ones he'd seen his coworkers suffer with shortly before they ended up having to be shot in the head.

It was numbing, knowing that one day someone was probably going to do the same to him, and that it would be the best outcome. Because the alternative . . .

Lately, even as things fell apart and corpses piled up and experiments escaped their cages, John had taken to wandering the building to keep his mind off it. He'd worked there for quite awhile, but he'd spent most of his time in the labs, and had never really taken the time to appreciate the Mansion's aesthetics.

The furnishings were all expensive and elegant; paintings, all originals, hung on the walls; porcelain vases and marble statues sat on tables and shelves. And the architecture was brilliant, if one overlooked all the traps—gothic and powerful in some places, subtle and refined in others. A perfect balance.

What a pretty place to die, he sometimes tried to think. Pretty, pretty, pretty, at least you have that much . . .

But no matter how hard he looked, and for how long, the Mansion never truly seemed anything but hollow, a dead body dressed up to look nice. It wasn't beautiful. Nothing was, anymore.

To him, everything beautiful was gone.

.

.

Author's Note: Crappy filler chapter is crappy. But I haven't been in much of a writing mood lately because my cat died last Saturday. I'm only just starting to kind of come out of the depression, but I still feel horrible. :(

Anyway, thanks for your reviews-they really helped cheer me up.

-Anna

PS: If anyone can find the (pretty obvious) reference to The Suffering, I'll like . . . write you something, or dedicate a chapter to you. I swear. I love that game, so much.