They'd finally managed to charter a boat after a morning of back-and-forths in broken Spanish, and then the better part of an afternoon with a German expat who had offered to translate for them and help them with paperwork—all for a fee that was well beyond reasonable, but still a fee they had paid after failing to haggle him down. Now they were coming up on the island, a black lump on the horizon, aboard a fisherman's dingy that had been brand-new sixty years ago.

The locals had called it Isla de San Amaro, but the German had told them it was Rockfort nowadays, owned and operated by the Umbrella Corporation. The German had warned them not to approach it; the local government had pretty much given Umbrella free reign over the island, he'd said, and Umbrella's people shot to kill. But nobody shot at them. Jill noticed plumes of dark smoke rising from the island. Something bad had happened.

"Looks like there was some kinda fire," Jill said to Chris, who was busy tooling up for the mission while their captain, as he'd done since they'd left port, ignored them, because he didn't speak a lick of English. Chris handed her a pack. She took it, slinging it over her shoulder. "You sure the e-mail's even from Claire? This is probably a trap, Chris." Jill frowned. "We know too much."

"Trap or not, it's still a chance to fuck Umbrella," he said, finishing with his pack and shouldering it. Like her, Chris wore his old S.T.A.R.S fatigues. "Besides," Chris said, "I'm not sure why, but I gotta gut-feeling it's not bullshit, Jill. Claire disappeared after looking into that shit in Paris." He sighed. "I should've never told her I was in Europe. It's my fault she's here."

An eyewitness had reported they'd seen a woman of Claire's description being escorted out of the Umbrella building in La Défense by a security detail, then put into an unmarked vehicle. Feeling something was wrong, the eyewitness had reported the incident to the Police Nationale, but nothing, as far as Jill or Chris knew, had come of it. "It's a shame Carlos couldn't come," she said. "He would've been useful. He was UBCS. Mentioned that he'd trained here."

Chris looked at her, frowning. "Too bad he's in Argentina, huh?"

She snorted. "Are you seriously jealous?"

"Not at all."

Jill smirked. "Sure, partner. Anyway, it wasn't like that. We helped each other out. That's all."

Chris ignored her, and said, "There's a trail leads from the beach up the side of the cliffs and through the jungle. Should take us to the facility."

She raised her eyebrows. "How'd you get the layout?"

"While I was investigating in Europe," he said, heading onto the deck and stepping over spools of oily rope and heaps of netting. Their captain didn't bother helping them with the gig, but Jill had some experience with boats because her father had operated a sailing tour in California, where he'd met her mother, and where Jill had later worked in the summers as a teenager. "Another reason I'm confident Claire's here," Chris said, lowering himself into the gig. "This place? Umbrella sends people here to permanently shut them up."

Jill climbed in after him, unhooked the gig from the dinghy, and yanked the cord on the motor. The gig roared to life, scudding across the water, spraying seawater in their face. "Carlos didn't mention that part," she remarked.

"Probably 'cause he didn't want you thinking badly of him," Chris said, sitting on the bench opposite her.

Jill shrugged. "Maybe."

They tethered the boat to an old dock, then climbed out and started up the trail. The stench of something rotten was on the air, underneath the pervasive, acrid stink of smoke, and gradually gave way to the smell of steamed vegetables as the jungle closed around them, trapping them in a permanent inversion layer of heat. Sweat was already rolling off her as they walked along the path, Chris cutting away the trees and overgrowth with a machete ahead of her.

"According to the file I read on this place, this trail was used by local drug-traffickers before Umbrella bought the island," Chris explained, hacking away bushes and branches. "For a brief time, Umbrella was using it to transport BOWs to the docks back there, but abandoned it when they built the airport. Been abandoned since. Should take us to the training facility."

"How deep did you manage to dig?" Jill asked.

"Deep enough that some of Umbrella's competitors caught wind and tried to buy me off," Chris said. "Told them to go fuck themselves, of course. They weren't happy about that."

Gradually, the jungle thinned out, became more manicured. They found themselves in front of a large concrete wall topped with spools of razor-wire. Several NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY signs were plastered pointlessly on the wall. Chris dropped his pack onto the ground and fished out a couple of blocks of C-4, which he attached to the wall. Then he unspooled the detonator cable.

"No fucking around, huh?" Jill said, amused.

Chris flashed a grin and picked up his pack. "Not where my sister's concerned."

Once they were a safe distance away, Chris detonated the explosive, and the wall crumbled like a wet cookie. Jill could make out some sort of courtyard beyond the wall, and the dark, squat shape of a tank. They stepped through the wall. Jill looked right, then left. Metal drums on the right, stacked on a rotting pallet, and on the left stood a chain-link gate. Other than those things, she saw nothing. "I don't like this," she said, pulling her gun.

Something shot out from underneath the tank and lunged at them, but missed. A mangy German Shepherd, open wounds glittering reddish-black on its skin, its eyes like peeled hard-boiled eggs. It gnashed its teeth and lunged again, this time at Jill, but she side-stepped, pivoted, and shot it. The dog crumpled with a high-pitched whine, lying on its side in a steadily growing pool of viscous blood, its hind-legs twitching.

"There's been an outbreak," Chris said. "Shit."

"I wish I could say I was surprised," Jill said, holstering her gun and pulling the bill of her S.T.A.R.S cap down low over her eyes. "Fuck, this shit just follows us everywhere."

"Claire..."

"She's okay," Jill said, touching his arm. "She's your sister, Chris. Got through Raccoon City, like me. She's a survivor."

Chris nodded. "Thanks, Jill." He looked at her. "For coming with me."

"We said we'd stop Umbrella," Jill said. "Here's as good a place to start as any." She smiled, showing a sliver of teeth. "Besides," she continued, "you're my partner, Chris. Have been since Arklay. I wouldn't let you do this on your own."

The chain-link gate was padlocked and chained, but two shots from Chris's gun got it open. He yanked the busted padlock off, tossed it aside, and then squeaked through the gate, mud squelching under his boots. A few dead zombies were scattered around the yard, though none of them had been shot; their necks had been broken. Some of them were still twitching, too, which meant they hadn't died that long ago.

"Snapped their necks clean," Chris said, inspecting one of the corpses. It was dressed in tactical gear, but didn't possess anything—no badges, no patches, no emblems of any kind—that identified it as having belonged to Umbrella's paramilitary forces. H.C.F was stamped on the back of its vest, in faded white stencil. "H.C.F," Chris said, and looked at her. "Ring any bells?"

Jill shook her head. "Mercenaries, maybe? Probably sent by one of Umbrella's competitors."

"Could be," Chris said. "In any case, whoever killed them probably isn't far from here. Better keep our eyes peeled."