It took a moment for Claire to recover from her collision with the ground. It reminded her of the pain she had felt when she had dived into her family's pool at ten-years-old, and had hit her head on the bottom of it. She remembered how the pain had oscillated up her spine, resonating there, and how nauseous she had felt when Chris had fished her from the water and laid her on the lounge chair, the June sun burning in her eyes...

But her neck wasn't broken, and that was obviously a good thing. Claire pushed herself to her feet, her body aching, and half-limped toward Chris, who was still sprawled face-down on the snow-covered concrete. "Chris?" she said, her breath turning to white clouds in the air. Her lips were cracked and cold. "Chris, you okay?"

Chris moved, which relieved her. He groaned and pushed himself to his knees. He had a nice deep bruise on his forehead, above his right eye, where his head had struck the ground. But he seemed okay. "I'm okay," he assured her, wincing. Chris went to open his knapsack, but realized he did not have it anymore.

"Alexia must have knocked it off the fucking helipad," said Claire, and helped him up.

"Shit. I had pain-killers in there," he said, and he cursed again, but under his breath. Chris shook his head. "No point searching for it. It's too cold out here. She might have even taken it." Chris stared at the burning wreckage of the chopper, looking morose. The flames sputtered and popped, the chemical tang of burnt fuel and machine parts filling the air. The pillar of black smoke swayed and fluttered in snowy gray gusts of arctic wind. "That was our only way out," he added, plaintively.

The thought of dying scared her. She was always told that it was worse to die alone, but she realized now that that was bullshit, and that dying alone, or dying with others, did not change anything. They were still dying. If she wasn't so tired, Claire would have cried. She wanted to, but could not find the energy to do it. "We need to find Steve," she said.

"Hey, cut that out," said Chris, and he slipped his arm around her, guiding her past the wreckage, and down the stairs into the garage. "We'll figure something out. You know I always manage." They stepped into the cold grayness of the hangar, the smell of rust and forgotten things hitting her nostrils. "That guy Alfred. Steve mentioned him. And I heard you mention him when I'd initially found you in here..."

It hit her then. Claire looked at Chris. "Alfred followed us here," she said, louder than she had intended. She lowered her voice. She doubted the zombies had found their way inside the hangar, but she could not be sure, so she decided to play it safe. "He flew here. In a jet."

"Hey, look," said Chris, grinning. "There's our silver-lining, Goob. I can fly it."

"Thank you, Air Force," said Claire, feeling relieved. Suddenly, things seemed so much brighter. They were riding into the sunset, the last survivors of a John Carpenter film. "I doubt Alexia destroyed it," she continued. "The jet's her only way out of here."

"You sure?" asked Chris, as they walked side by side.

Claire nodded. "I'm sure." They walked on. Then she said, "Steve was the one who killed Alfred." She looked at Chris. "That's why Alexia's targeting him."

Chris seemed to consider something. Then, "That explains why she's only been half-heartedly attacking us. Her beef is with Steve." He shook his head, his expression uncharacteristically grave. "Which means we have to hustle. Steve's running on a short clock."

Claire hustled as fast as her busted ankle would let her, which was at a steady hobble. They made their way down into the main atrium. It was eerily silent, and Claire could not help but feel as if something very bad was about to happen. "You think Alexia took him back down to the cell?" she asked, making her way across the snowdrifts that had accumulated at the bottom of the atrium.

"Maybe," said Chris, and he frowned. "But she could have taken him anywhere. This facility is huge."

There was a sudden noise, from deeper in the facility, high above. It sounded like gunshots: the steady pop-pop-pop of automatics. "Did you hear that?" said Claire, looking up. She did not see anyone—just the gray sky beyond the broken dome-glass, the snowflakes caking her eyelashes. "You think it's survivors from Rockfort?"

"Could be, but that shit sounds military-grade," said Chris.

"Rockfort had a paramilitary," said Claire. "Maybe they took rifles off the guards?"

"Maybe," said Chris, though he did not sound convinced.

Another sound, and this time, it was something like a roar. It was the sort of roar Claire imagined might have belonged to dinosaurs. It seemed to vibrate in the air at some loud primordial frequency, and it made her ears pop, similar to the effect of a jet as it lifted into the air...

Bang. Claire saw something tumble over the railing, and realized it was a man in black fatigues and Kevlar gear, his face hidden by a goggled balaclava. The man hit the ground with a wet noise, his chest opened, showing torn muscle and fat, and part of his rib-cage, as if some enormous claw had ripped through him. The crumpled remnant of a white-painted fire door fell beside the corpse; it looked as if it had literally been ripped off its hinges.

"That Harman guy you mentioned isn't a bioweapon, right?" asked Chris, taking out his gun. Since his knapsack was gone, all he had was his Glock, and his S.T.A.R.S-issue knife, which was sheathed on his shoulder.

Claire took the dead man's rifle, and scrounged what ammunition she could from his utility belt. His wound smelled necrotic, of spoiled meat and blood-tang. "Not that I know of," she said, loading the gun with a fresh clip. "But fuck, what do I know when it comes to Umbrella? Who's the dead guy anyway?"

Chris turned the body over. H.C.F was decaled on the back of the dead man's bulky tactical vest. Chris did not seem to recognize the name. "Never seen this logo before," he said. "Maybe it's one of Umbrella's clean-up details?"

There was another roar, and it was louder this time, closer. Claire looked up, saw something big and green moving along the upper-ring of the atrium. Whatever it was, the thing vaguely resembled Killer Croc. She heard screams, saw more bodies flung from the railing, hitting the snowdrifts with visceral noises. Then the Killer Croc-thing leaped over the railing and landed a few feet from them, the impact of its bulk hitting the snowy concrete making the ground shake. Claire went sideways, and the thing loomed over her, gore-chunks dripping from between its long saber-teeth.

Claire recognized the monster then, and her entire body went dead-cold, then completely numb. It was Steve. The Steve-thing watched them with bright red eyes, the pupils thin vertical slits. "Steve," she said, her chest hurting, pain unfolding between her breasts like a barbed lotus flower. "What did Alexia do to you?" She already knew what Alexia had done, but had said it anyway. Alexia had done exactly what William Birkin had done. Exactly what every Umbrella scientist had ever done. She had experimented.

The Steve-thing did not seem to recognize her. He charged like a mad bull. Chris pushed her out of the way and said, "Look. It isn't Steve anymore." He scrambled to his feet and pulled her up by her jacket, and they were running harum-scarum across the atrium, the Steve-thing right on their asses.

They were just about through a door when something made them go sideways. She heard her brother scream, "Claire!" and then she was dangling several feet above the snowdrifts and concrete, and realized it had been one of Alexia's tentacles, and it was wrapped around her, an anaconda slowly squeezing the life from its prey. Claire could feel the thorns digging into her meat, and they hurt deeply and made her bleed. On some level, she was okay with dying now. Steve was gone, and Chris and her were never going to escape the Antarctic anyway, not while Alexia was still alive and still had a grudge—still had company secrets she did not want exposed.

The Steve-thing reached for her with its rake-like claws, and Claire closed her eyes, waiting for that sudden blackness she had always imagined that happened in death. There would be no tunnel of light, no angels. There would only be nothing. She remembered something then that she had read in a philosophy book once. Epicurus had said: Death is nothing to us.

But the nothingness never came. The Steve-thing made a noise like a scrape, which vaguely sounded like her name, and tried to tear the tentacle apart. When that proved ineffective, the Steve-thing started to bite and gnaw the thing until it was too weak to hold her. Claire fell and hit the snow. She watched the tentacle snap around and impale the Steve-creature's stomach, pinning him to the wall on the other side of the atrium.

Steve-thing shrank and became something human and pathetic now, naked skin the color of corpses, and the tentacle slithered away like a wounded snake, retreating into a crack in the wall behind her. Claire scrambled toward him, even though her ankle still hurt deeply, and she was bleeding where the thorns had dug into her flesh, and threw herself down beside him.

Chris stood behind her and said, "Tried to get a clear shot. Fucking thing knocked me down." He stared at Steve, and Claire could see that look in his eyes which said: he isn't going to make it. It had been the exact look Chris had worn in the hospital room as their father had slowly died, then had flat-lined in the middle of the night.

Steve looked just like her father had, before her father had died. His skin was white, and his eyes had that heavy, unfocused look of a person who was trying very hard to cling to life, but finding it enormously difficult. He smiled weakly, his blood-stained fingers clutching his stomach, which was nothing more than a pulpy necrotic hole now. "Sorry you gotta see me like this," he said, in typical Steve fashion.

"Stop talking. We have a way out, Steve. You just have to hold on," said Claire.

Steve shook his head. "We both know I'm not getting out of here alive, Claire." He touched her face, and his fingers were like cool porcelain on her cheek, and left wet blood there. "Just make that bitch pay. Do it for me, for everyone who's gonna suffer if she gets off this ice-cube."

Claire nodded, felt a hot tear slide down her cheek.

"Kill Harman too," he said. "He... guy pistol-whipped me. Shot my knee out. Pinned me down while Alexia injected me with her fucking virus." He shook his head, and it seemed to take a physical toll on him, as if shaking his head had been the hardest trick in the world. "Her virus patched the damage, but... can't really say this is a better trade-off."

"Now is not the time for fucking jokes, Steve," said Claire, and she started crying: hard, lurching sobs. Chris squeezed her shoulder, but it did nothing for her, just as it had done nothing for her when their father had died. "I'm so sorry we didn't reach you in time, Steve."

"You tried," said Steve, and he kissed her.

They stayed like that for a long time, kissing in the silent daylight. Then Steve's chest became still. His eyes emptied, and looked artificial now in his pale dead face which, in death, appeared more like a mask, like something grown from a collagen culture for skin-grafts. Steve looked like a wax doll now, an inert animatronic, and her father had looked that way too. "Alexia," she said finally, "is going to pay, Chris. And so is Harman."

"You take some time," said Chris, rubbing her back. He glanced at the dead bodies, which were littered around them, each one dressed in black fatigues and Kevlar. "Maybe I can find out something from these guys about whatever Alexia's up to. You just focus on yourself right now, Goob."