She was going to kill them all. Everyone.
Alexia had taken Grayson's gun, not because she needed it—she had much better weapons in her biological arsenal—but because it had been something of Grayson's, and she felt comforted by that, by the weight of it in her hand. She carried Scott's research in the other hand, in its hard-case.
Riding the elevator up to the reactor room, halogen lights shining on the convex walls like so many artificial stars. Alexia made her way over the cat-walk, across the expansion-grate platform, the enormous rise of the ant-hive beneath her feet. Clusters of winged ants skittered over the hive, their swollen abdomens glittering like fat jewels, and they wheeled and tumbled through the air in patterns that almost made sense...
She swiped her security card at the door to the reactor room, waited for it to open, barely sparing a glance to her father's magnum opus, encased in a box of shatterproof glass on her right: the linear launcher. A laser he'd developed for the sole purpose of eradicating her, should the T-Veronica make her too unmanageable. Supposedly, the laser was capable of inducing rapid apoptosis, targeting infected cells—which would be all of her—and destabilizing the whole structure: her body. One of several other reasons, Alexia told herself, that her father had deserved to die.
The door opened. Alexia strode inside, across another expansion-grate cat-walk, approaching the computer terminal. Zombies in technician coveralls and hard hats milled around in the aisle below the walk, lowing like swiped her security card at the terminal, then punched in the code: VERONICA.
The reactor whirred to life. The alarm lights flashed red, then yellow, then red again. The self-destruct system announced that she had two hours to evacuate the facility; though it would take her less than thirty minutes to reach the bunker through the maintenance tunnels.
Alexia felt a pang of guilt, wishing she could bring Grayson's body with her. She wanted to give him a proper burial; but there wasn't any time to puzzle out the logistics.
Leaving the reactor room, the automated door shuttering behind her, Alexia heard a deep, guttural roar from somewhere below the platform. The ants scattered, flew away in a panic. Something hauled itself up onto the expansion-grate, using its appendages as grappling hooks.
Steve Burnside, now a hulking, hairless thing of chitinous flesh and spidery appendages, stood between her and the only way out. He stared at her with empty sockets crusted with blood, strings of drool dripping from a mouth bristling with fangs, sizzling on the grate.
Alexia put down Scott's research, Grayson's gun.
A synaptic trick: her body started to change, burned so hot that yet another of her grandmother's dresses crumbled, flaked away in embers. Her flesh grayed, patches of hardened chitin pebbling over her vitals like armor, dark capillaries unfurling across her skin like a web of ink-bleeds.
"I have no time for you, Burnside," Alexia said, moving toward him, hands erupting into flames from the chemical secretions of her mutant skin.
Grayson sat up, inhaled a deep lungful of air like a man desperate for it, and looked around, feeling disoriented and confused.
He'd been in the infirmary. He remembered pulling his gun on Steve, who'd mutated into some kind of monster, then shoving Claire through the door. Then he'd—his forehead creased with the effort of recollection. Hadn't he died? Yeah, that's right. Stabbed through the chest, Grayson was pretty sure. A severed artery in his leg. You're getting there, man. Fire.
Looking down, he unbuttoned his shirt, saw no wound, no burned skin. He unbuckled his belt, pulled down his pants and inspected his thigh. his pants. Looked around again and stood up with a quickness that surprised him. How did I get to the mansion? He made the mistake of looking up at the chandelier, and the light seared his eyes. Grayson recoiled, covering his eyes until the pain went away. And did not look up again, or look at any other lights.
He became aware, then, of an alarm: a whirl of red and orange lights, and a robotic voice instructing all personnel to evacuate the facility. Shit. Someone had tripped the self-destruct system.
Every Umbrella facility, from what Alexia had once told him, had a self-destruct system. It was a last resort fail-safe, should all other fail-safes fail, to wipe evidence. All traces. People, things—anything that could tie Umbrella to the crime of bio-terrorism in a court of law—gone in a cloud of fire and smoke.
Alexia. "I gotta find you," he said aloud, and left the mansion.
Jill was relieved to see that the plane was still parked in the hangar; however, that meant Wesker was still prowling the facility. And so was Steve. Not that it mattered, she told herself; someone had triggered the self-destruct sequence. Wesker, Steve, Alexia—they were all going to be blown to hell.
They started up the plane's cargo ramp, when a fist sent Jill sprawling backward, her gun flying from her hand and clattering across the concrete. She hit the ground, hard, and skidded, bloodily scraping her arm.
"Where do you three think you're going?" Wesker said, stepping off the plane, his eyes glowing like pools of molten metal. He grabbed Claire, held her in a choke-hold. He looked at Chris, smiled sourly. "Don't want to hurt your little sister, do you, Redfield?" he asked. "Would be a sad thing indeed, should your shot miss," and he tapped Claire's skull with his finger, "and struck her here."
"Let her go, Wesker," Chris snapped. "You want me, right? Not her."
"I want both you and Jill," Wesker said, staring at Chris, Claire's face purpling, hands scrabbling to pry his arms from around her neck and failing to budge them even an inch. "Both of you ruined my plans in Arklay."
"Then fight us, asshole. Let Claire go," Jill said, and stood up. Her arm stung. She glanced to her right: her gun lay at the foot of a stack of crates. One good lunge, she could reach it…
Wesker released Claire, shoved her to the side, and, just as Jill dove for her gun, appeared in front of her. He grabbed her wrist, his fingers like pneumatic clamps. "How do you even know it'll kill me?" he asked, and twisted her arm, nearly popping it from its socket. Jill clenched her teeth, tears of pain rimming her eyes. "You were, after all, so sure you'd killed me in the Spencer mansion."
Jill kicked Wesker as hard as she could in the knee with the heel of her boot, and his leg buckled, hand releasing her. A bruise purpled on her wrist, painful to the touch. She dove for the gun, hit the ground on her belly and slid, fingers wrapping around the grip. Rolling onto her back, Jill fired three rounds into Wesker's center mass. Gouts of blood erupted from his back, spattering the concrete; but he did not go down.
The bullets were pushed from him like splinters, the empty casings clattering on the floor. His pupils shrunk to hairline slits. He moved toward her, robotic.
Chris came up behind Wesker and collared him around the neck with his arms, the muscles straining with the effort of keeping him still, face turning red. "I don't think so," Chris said through his teeth, the muscle in his jaw twitching. They scuffled, Wesker and him, and Chris tried to wrestle Wesker to the ground, his boots scuffling on the concrete.
Wesker threw his head back, struck Chris in the nose. He whipped around and clamped his hand around Chris's throat, slamming him up against the stack of crates. The crates wobbled precariously. "In the Spencer Mansion, I was going to sell the tyrant to one of Umbrella's rivals," he said, his tone cool, dangerous. "As well as the relevant project data. I wanted to to hurt Spencer. But you and Jill fucked it up, and now?" He squeezed Chris's throat, the leather of his gloves creaking. "I have to whore myself to the H.C.F to make up for my failure."
"How's it feel?" Chris managed to say, staring down his nose at Wesker. "Knowin' you'll never be anythin' but someone's bitch, Wesker? You're no leader. Never have been. You know how much shit we talked on you in S.T.A.R.S?"
Wesker growled and slammed Chris's head against the crates. They wobbled, nearly tipped over; there was a crumpled dent where the back of Chris's skull had struck the metal. "When I'm through with you, Chris, I'll kill Valentine and your sister."
"They'll kill you before you can do shit," Chris said.
Wesker cursed, slammed Chris against the crates again, the metal yielding under the blow with a squeal. This time, the boxes toppled, tumbling down onto their heads.
Jill yelled for Chris and hurried over, trying to dig him out; but the boxes were massive and heavy, and wouldn't budge. The self-destruct sequence told them, politely, they had less than an hour to evacuate. Claire tried to help her move the boxes, but the two of them could barely push aside one, let alone the whole pile.
"We don't have time," Jill said, finally.
"You're wrong," Claire shot back. Then she called out for Chris, tears streaking the grime on her cheeks. Jill grabbed her by the shoulders, pulled Claire away. She struggled against her as Jill attempted to strongarm her onto the plane.
The boxes moved. They stopped, looked. Wesker stood up, bloodied and bruised, and hurled one of the crates to the side as if it weighed nothing at all. It rolled across the hangar and crashed into a forklift, which crumpled like a cheap plastic toy. Part of his face had been skinned, as if filleted by a sharp piece of metal.
"That one was my fault," Wesker said, and jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the heap of crates. "Always been a bit of a hot-head." He looked at her, his face a wet, bloody ruin of muscle and fat. "But you know that already, Jill."
Then, suddenly, Wesker's head dissolved into a red mist, his body folding and dropping like a sack of weights. He did not get up again.
Claire lowered her gun. "Fuck you, asshole," she said.