Dr.William Birkin

David got the door in his sights, determined to kill something before they could take him. The door began to slide open slowly... "BREACH BANG AND CLEAR!!!" yelled a voice from beyond, a small canister flew into the room bouncing off of a wall and landing near the back, behind the makeshift barricade. "Shit...flash bang...we don't even get to see them coming..." thought David as the others ducked instinctively. The loud report and phosphorescent light subsided quickly, the angle the bang landed at obscuring it slightly. "DIE!" yelled Nathan, blasting at the now oncoming cleaner troops with the akimbo 9mms. A shot hit one in the upper chest, knocking him back. The sound of the m4 carbines blasting forth bursts of 5.56mm rounds barely muted the shotgun/small arms/rifle fire being returned. 2 more soldiers fell. David, now having reached the breaking point, stood up and began madly firing the rifle at the troops. "EAT THIS YOU FREAKS!!!!!!!!" yelled David, squeezing the trigger rapidly, mowing one soldier down and narrowly missing another.

He never saw the laser targeted flash across his left arm, and never heard the burst of automatic fire that hit him in the torso. David's mind seemed to shut off, as he fell backwards unconscious, the searing wounds filling his body with a dull ache. Darkness clouded his vision as the gunfight continued...

"TARGET #2 IS DOWN!" screamed one of the soldiers, blazing away at the stubborn survivors with his m4, stopping only to reload. "SHIT, THIS IS INSANITY..FALL BACK...FALL BA-" the squad leaders words ceased flowing as a shotgun blast threw him to the ground dead instantly. The soldiers began walking backwards, down the hallway. Bursts of gunfire periodically signaling they may have been beaten for now, but that this was far from over.

Security director Markenson stood in awe, staring at the monitors, the half smoked cigarette falling out of his gaping mouth. "MOTHER OF GOD...THEY ACTUALLY......well I'll be damned...a group of stubborn teenagers just fought off a squad of some of my best retrieval agents..." Slamming his fist down onto the intercom button, he screamed through to the lieutenant of the broken squad "LOOK...I'M NOT GOING TO ASK HOW YOU WERE DECIMATED BY A BUNCH OF INEXPERIENCED ROOKIES...ALL I'M GOING TO SAY IS IF YOU THINK YOU'RE OUT NOW, YOU'RE DEAD WRONG.....continue to watch them....I want them either incarcerated or dead before the sun rises!" "Uh...sir....we....we....they took us completely by surprise sir..the captain got blasted away by a shotgun that looked like it came from nowhere...we did tag that Sunderland kid though, as ordered." A smile formed on Markensons face...a cold, humorous, dark smile. "Well well well..now this should really get fun to watch..." he said, settling back in his chair as the activities continued over the security monitors...

Claire Redfield

Winsor slid her back down against the wall. Jarred and Nathan were right next to David who was bleeding from a wound that she couldn't see since Alex was blocking her view.

"Oh my God," Alex said.

"He's been shot," John said.

"It went through his arm. I don't think the bone is broken," Nathan said.

"Someone get something to help him," Vanessa said.

Winsor growled and lifted her head up. "I'll go find something," she muttered. She was exhausted. She knew the others were, but she just liked to see other people suffer. If she was to suffer she might as well amuse herself with suffering from others.

She got up and walked to a door a different door that the didn't come through. She opened the door and closed it behind her. The hall smelled of blood; the fact that some parts of the wall were splattered with dried blood. She raised her weapon, her eyes searching the hallway for anything moving or not moving.

Great. Go to the hospital. It will be safe...Safe my ass. Getting shot at is not really a good sign that you are "safe".

A noise came from behind her and she turned around, already readying herself for a shot.

Vanessa. Goddamn Vanessa was standing there she closed the door and slowly walked to Winsor.

Winsor snickered at the girl's stupidity. She could have shot her accidentally. She lowered the gun and turned her back to Vanessa and started to walk away.

"Winsor? Wait, I'm coming with you," Vanessa said. Her footsteps echoed through the hall as she ran to Winsor.

Wonderful. Out of all the people that survived this long, she is the one who wants to follow me.

"What do you want," Winsor snapped.

"I'll help find something. Anything. David is bleeding badly," Vanessa said.

"Really? I must have missed the bloodstain on the floor or that everyone that was surrounding him saying that he was hurt," Winsor said sarcastically.

Vanessa remained quiet as they stopped in front of the first door they have seen in the hallway. It was unmarked, but Winsor opened it. It appeared to be a doctor's office. A cluttered desk and a small locker in the room. There was papers covering the floor.

Vanessa walked over to the locker and opened it. She pulled out a white towel.

Winsor sighed. There was nothing else in the room. She put her head in her hands and winced a little in pain after touching her cheek. It was a little swollen.

Vanessa must have seen Winsor touch her cheek. "I'm sorry, Winsor. I shouldn't have hit you," she said meekly.

Winsor frowned. "You just made yourself weak now. You do know that?" she replied.

"Weak?" Vanessa asked curiously.

"Apologizing is for the weak. It proves that something that was thought to be intentional was actually unintentional. Pretty much a waste of energy," She said sighing.

"Why are you like that?" Vanessa asked.

"Like what?" Winsor replied tiredly. She was starting to become annoyed.

"Why are you so pessimistic? You always keep your distance from everyone, not to mention causing some fights," Vanessa said.

"Yeah, well John and David are morons," Winsor said replying with a smile.

"Even now you are using sarcasm. Why can't you-"

"-Be like you? That what makes us all different. We have different statuses. The popular people, the nerds, the goths. Where I stand is not with the goths," Winsor interrupted with a snap.

"Then who are you?" Vanessa asked.

"No one knows who they truly are, but what they become. I am different from everyone that went to our school. I was...handicapped in a way."

"Everyone is different."

"Yeah, but you know about friendship, love, and hope. I never had a family. Never. Anyone who tried to teach me, it wasn't the real thing. Only the original material can make me understand what is my purpose. I was a mistake. I never knew my parents, while your kind was loved and cared about."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but you are not the only one that has problems."

"Gee, I didn't know you cared," she said sarcastically.

Vanessa looked pissed. "I...we try to help you and still you can't accept it!"

"Accept what? Accept help when people think I need it? I am a mistake. I have no purpose in life. How can I care about others when no one cared about me in the beginning?" Winsor yelled. She looked away from Vanessa. "You have no idea what it's like to have confusion and emotions that are constantly questioned. The others say I care only about myself. I don't. I don't care what's going to happen to me and neither will the others or anyone else."

It's the truth too, isn't it? John almost shot me. David almost tackled me. Ryan threatened me. Alex thinks I hate her. Nathan and Jarred probably hate me and now Vanessa. They just don't understand. I don't want to be weak, like them. Apologizing to Nathan made me feel weaker, but also something else. So why do I feel weaker even more now than when I apologized?

Vanessa was about to say something, but sighed and slowly walked out of the room. Winsor followed, leaving the doctor's office and returning to the hall. Back to the others, but also facing a new threat. Something lurking in the ventilation shafts. Something black with a long curved claw on one hand, making small clicking noises.

Winsor and Vanessa didn't notice the noise from above them.

Joker

It had been an intense bout of gunplay. After Ryan tried to fire his empty SMG (and nearly got killed in the process), he was able to take one down with his Beretta. At least, he hoped it was him that took one down. David's psychotic rampage made it very hard to tell, but the natural tachypsychia afflicting Ryan made it easier to fight. His father told him about many instances where tachypsychia saved his life, the strange phenomenon occurring when someone was in mortal danger, seeming to slow down the very time-space continuum itself even though he was probably moving faster than ever. For once, Ryan was grateful for the natural processes of people. It probably saved them all.

After taking a deep breath, Ryan got up from his cover and noticed David on the floor, bleeding quite profusely while the others looked on. Winsor and Vanessa were nowhere to be seen.

As the ménagerie around David began to speculate just how wounded he was and how long Winsor would take to get some medical supplies, Ryan walked toward the group, more toward David than anyone and looked at them all incredulously.

"Had it occurred to any of you that it might be a good idea to try and keep him alive?!?", he said, desperately trying to formulate a plan of action.

"And just what would you have us do, Ryan?!?", John shot back. "There aren't any medical supplies here!"

"Jesus! What the hell ever happened to improvisation?!?", Ryan said as he took off his jacket and hunted around for something sharp. It took a hell of a long time to rip out the cloth for his leg tourniquet and David didn't have the luxury of time on his side.

Finding a stray scalpel, Ryan cut out the entire lining of his jacket. He would have just cut it up in its entirety, but it was his "lucky" jacket and he didn't feel like parting with it right now. Ryan figured they needed all the luck they could get. Hadn't been that lucky so far...

Then again, he was still alive, wasn't he?

"Jarred, your gun, please!", Ryan called.

"You're not going to shoot him, are you?", Jarred replied, mustering up a nervous laugh as he tossed the MP5K to Ryan.

"The thought had crossed my mind", Ryan retorted, without skipping so much as a beat as he caught the weapon and released the sling.

As Ryan once again began the laborious process of binding another wound, he thought about what to do with the abdominal wounds.

"Someone grab the rest of that cloth and press it against the wound! You want him bleeding any more than he has already?", Ryan called, only to discover that Nathan was way ahead of him in that department.

"You take First Aid, Ryan?", Nathan asked curiously.

"No, never. Do I sound like I know what I'm doing?"

"Well... yes", Nathan replied, quite surprised that Ryan was handling the situation as he was.

"Good. Then we might just get this under control", Ryan said as he finished the arm tourniquet. He hadn't bothered to mention that his father's role in SWAT was that of an EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). Who knew listening to stories of treating bullet wounds would pay off?

While Ryan and Nathan worked furiously to staunch the flow of blood with what little they had, Jarred, John and Alex started searching the corpses. Alex was a little less pale than before. "Guess that's one less problem", Ryan thought as he pressed down on the bloody holes perforated in David.

Retrieving some M4's and some clips along with other miscellaneous tactical gear that survived the bullets, Jarred, John and Alex returned to check how David was doing. From what Ryan could see, the blood had stopped, but David was still wounded pretty heavily.

As the group started to relax a little more, a crash and a scream echoed down the hall.

John's head jerked in the direction of the noise as he said, almost echoing the sentiments of everyone, "What the hell was that?!?"