Title: Fading Away

Author: Malenkaya

Rating: R

Summary: (RE movie fanfic) A continuation of the movie, featuring old and new characters, new settings, and new conflict. In a zombie infested Raccoon City, how can Alice, Matt, and Rain survive?

Disclaimer: I do not own Resident Evil or its characters.

Feedback: Please! I live and breathe reviews! Flames, as long as their explanatory, are fine.

Author's Notes: Again, a thousand thanks to everyone for their reviews! My apologies, as I'm uploading these final three chapters of "Fading Away" before posting each one every week or second week and thus have no idea who's reviewing- so I can't list names as I usually do!

"Y", as always, for spaces...

And this is the seventh and final chapter. I am continuing this fanfiction though, part one in a trilogy- so please keep an eye out for "Into the Light", which should be up in a couple of weeks.

Thanks again for all the reviews!'

Fading Away

Chapter Seven: Epiphany

Silence.

In all her twenty-six years, Alice had never realized how strong, how oppressive it could be.

She'd never recognized the way it could permeate her very being, forcing her to think about the one thing, the only thing, she wished she'd never have to think about again.

Kaplan. His weak smile, his last words.

The sound of him screaming as they ran from the room—

She shook the thoughts, memories from her head even as the guilt closed in, taking over all other emotion.

Kaplan had sacrificed himself for the team. It wasn't her fault- it was his decision.

But she couldn't help but wish it'd been her instead- even as the other half of her brain, the rational side, rejoiced at her survival.

Rain shifted, and Alice snapped to attention again, trying to focus on the situation at hand and push away all other thoughts.

She was sitting at the kitchen table next to Rain, holding a gauze pad over the brunette's neck wound. The bite there had caught on something, torn open somehow, and Michael had left to find and sterilize a needle and thread to stitch it closed.

J.D sat on the table on the other side of Rain, clutching an orange in one palm and staring at it as if it would answer all their unasked questions. Matt paced around the kitchen, his face stony and silent.

Neither were injured- of their group of six—

Five—

Alice and Rain were the only casualties. Alice's shoulder burned where Spence had hit her, but the skin was basically unmarred.

It was Michael's theory that Umbrella had done something to his skin to make it burn that way- yet another strong defensive mechanism the monster seemed to have.

She wondered how Umbrella had mutilated him.

And why they'd chosen Spence.

But as it was, Alice hadn't bothered using the anti-virus on the wound.

It'd been easy to steal the light metal case on her way out of the Umbrella laboratory. The same power outage which, Matt had told her, had allowed him to escape his room had unlocked the laboratory doors, rendering all Umbrella's painstakingly designed security precautions useless in less than a minute.

But she didn't want to use it if she didn't have to. Someone else might need it more later, and she doubted it'd be as easy to steal another now.

And if she did need it, she could always get it later.

Instead Michael had simply disinfected it and bandaged her shoulder lightly with more gauze.

And now she sat next to Rain, holding the gauze still on her neck as she fidgeted nervously, trying, Alice supposed, to do the same thing she herself was attempting to do- stop thinking about Kaplan.

She focused her attention on Matt instead, who paced back and forth across the kitchen, the rage and frustration barely concealed in his stony face.

When he saw her watching, he flashed her a tight-lipped smile and commented, his voice measured, "It's really too bad about Kaplan, isn't it?"

Alice flinched at his casual tone. He saw her expression and shrugged. "What? It's not Kaplan's fault that some of us couldn't bother to think about the fact that maybe the codes would have been changed by now."

Alice looked away, feeling herself flush. Matt was only upset about Kaplan, she knew that... but still, how could he say that? To her?

"And it's too bad that some of us never thought about what I said- that with all the fucking codes, we could get stuck in here. Isn't it?"

He continued, and Alice struggled to ignore him, pushing aside the vestiges of guilt. She could feel Rain's shoulder tense under her hand, could almost sense J.D gripping her arm, sending Rain an imperceptible "Don't start another argument" look.

Matt finally gave up his pretense and turned to look directly at Alice. She stared back at him, feeling frightened despite herself at the obvious rage in his eyes. "Look, Alice. I know you're upset about Kaplan, but why the hell wouldn't you listen to me? Maybe if you had, Kaplan wouldn't have had to fucking die to save the rest of us."

To her horror, Alice could feel tears springing up in her eyes and looked away. "Matt, I don't want to talk about this right now—"

He snickered. "Why not? What, are you just going to pretend it wasn't your fault?"

"It wasn't Alice's fault the codes wouldn't work," Rain told him. Her voice was cold, measured, but J.D's tight grip on her arm made her barely restrained anger obvious.

Matt turned to face her, looking surprised. "What exactly are you trying to say here, Rain?"

She shrugged. "Maybe you should put the blame where it should be, Matt."

Matt stared at her. Then he smiled. "Kaplan got left behind because he was a liability, didn't he?"

Enough. "Matt, Kaplan didn't get left behind—"

"Shut up." He whirled to face her, pointing at her. "Just shut up, Alice."

She complied, feeling hurt- and shocked. Matt had never, ever spoken to her like that.

By Rain's tensed shoulders, she could tell Rain wasn't happy about it either as Matt continued. "You were a liability not so long ago too, weren't you, Rain?" He cut her off as she started to answer. "Except you didn't get left behind because you had J.D carrying you around like your fucking mommy. Too bad Kaplan wasn't so lucky, huh?"

If he had been trying to find the most hurtful, anger-inducing insult to use on Rain, he couldn't have found anything better than that. They all knew how Rain hated to be seen as vulnerable- and to imply that it was that vulnerability that had gotten Kaplan killed only fueled her fire.

Rain's eyes flashed, and she jumped out of her seat, shaking off J.D's arm as she did so. "Are you saying this was my fault or something?"

She was shouting now and J.D left the room in disgust. Alice could relate. She couldn't believe the way they were all fighting after what had happened to poor Kaplan, couldn't stand that they were all falling apart so easily.

Matt laughed. "Isn't it obvious?"

Her eyes flashed. "You know who's fault it is, Matt?" she shouted. "Who was the one who dropped the fucking card in the first place?"

Matt stopped laughing. "Shut the hell up, Rain."

His voice was dark, menacing, and Alice willed Rain silently to do what he asked, not wanting to see what would happen if she refused.

But of course, Rain, being Rain, got right up in his face and said, "Stop starting shit then."

"I'm serious Rain, shut the fuck up!" He shouted the last part, his face burning red, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

Rain noticed too and looked slightly taken aback, but continued. "What if I don't, Matt? What are you going to do then?"

He glared at her, his face twitching with rage—

And then he slammed his fist into her face.

With an inhumanely hard punch, he sent her flying across the room, crashing into the wall and collapsing into a heap as Alice watched in shock.

Matt advanced towards Rain and she forced herself into motion, sliding between him and Rain. "Matt, what are you doing—"

He looked at her, and she stopped. His eyes were burning red, filled with rage and hatred—

And, she noticed, with a sickening sense of dread, his arm, the month-old scratches there, were rippling.

But despite that, she still thought she was safe, that he wouldn't hit her.

She was wrong.

And as she smashed into the table, her head slamming into the wall, the same utter disbelief was the last thing she felt before she passed out.

y

When Michael had first heard the shouts, the thuds and crashes, he, along with J.D, had figured Matt and Rain were at it again. Starting another fight.

So he'd grabbed the freshly sterilized needle and thread, placing it onto the gauze he'd found in the storage room, and left for the kitchen, J.D following.

And, as it turned out, they were both partly right. Matt and Rain were fighting.

But nothing prepared them for the scene they walked in upon as they stepped into the kitchen.

They knew Matt had a temper. They knew he'd been violent lately. And, despite the fact they all knew he would never try to hurt Rain, accidents happened. If he'd lost his temper sometime and hit her, they'd understand it. Even Rain herself would probably understand it, after she beat on him for awhile too.

But nothing would have prepared them to walk into the kitchen and see him throwing Alice into the wall. He'd never even snapped at Alice, and to see him actually exerting physical violence on her—

They were forced to snap out of their shock when Matt turned, facing them.

J.D hurried forward, sending a vicious right hook to Matt's face.

And nothing happened. Matt reacted like J.D was a fucking fly or something, just standing there and staring at him, not moving.

Then he hit J.D, hit J.D hard enough to send him to the floor before lifting him up and throwing him into the row of counters lining the wall.

And then Matt looked at him and shouted, no, roared before advancing on him, the kitchen literally shaking with his footsteps—

And Michael turned around where he stood in the doorway, dropping the gauze and running for the stairs.

Cowardly or not, there was no way he'd be able to fight off Matt before Matt killed him.

All he could do was run.

y

The dark haired human smashed into the counter and fell, and he advanced on him. The rage buzzed in his head, threatening to consume him—

And Nemesis was hungry. Wouldn't stand for this particular person's arrogance, to run into the kitchen and make a laughable attempt to stop him.

He reached out to the human as he began to stand—

And was distracted by sudden movement.

Spinning around, he saw that the dark haired girl, the smaller one, had begun to move, the stupefaction caused by her head smashing against the wall having worn off.

A look of anger- not fear, but anger- crossed her face as she began to stand—

And he was in front of her in a single leap, slamming her wrists into the wall and holding them there before she could rise halfway up. She tried briefly to yank her arms from his grip before attempting to kick him instead- but he was ready for this, and used his own foot to slam her leg against the wall. She gasped in pain, a quiet protest from such a usually insolent person, but didn't move. If she did, she was in a perfect position to break her leg and she knew it as well as he did.

She looked at him and he was gratified to see fear, rather than anger, in her eyes now.

She was afraid of him.

She should be.

She tensed as he leaned into her neck, to the fresh blood he could smell there. It was splashed over her neck, all around the bite mark there and he could practically taste it as he leaned in—

And, reaching out gently with a tongue now rough and scaly, he slowly licked the blood away—

And a sudden shot of pain rushed through him. Nemesis dropped her, threw her aside as he whipped around.

The person standing there held a gun in his hand, was backing away slowly, and Nemesis advanced on him, ready to rip out his throat for his attack—

Except he couldn't move anymore. His limbs were numb, his vision was fading—

And then he was Matt again, as he collapsed to the floor, waking up as if from a dream to see the utter pandemonium he had caused.

And then he fell back into another dream, and slept again.

y

J.D hurried across the room as Matt collapsed onto the floor, his eyes closing even as he reached Rain. He reached out to her, touching her neck gently. She flinched and pushed his hand away.

"I'm fine."

She said it defensively, but honestly, so he left her alone, hurrying over to check on Alice as Michael, looking exhausted, dropped the tranquilizer gun onto the floor.

It'd been smart, to find the gun in the storage room. To be honest, J.D had assumed Michael had run away only to save his own sorry ass.

Luckily, that wasn't the case.

Michael was a lot stronger, a lot smarter than he looked. J.D was going to have to stop underestimating him.

But for now, he just checked Alice's head over. There was no visible cuts or scrapes, only a bump rapidly forming on the back of her head. Turning her head to the side, he checked both ears, and was relieved to see neither blood or CSF. Doctor or not, he was smart enough to know that bleeding cerebrospinal fluid was about the worst outcome of a head wound.

She was waking up even as he did so, and he helped her into a sitting position as she slowly opened her eyes, looking around her as if dazed.

Then her blue eyes focused, and she asked, "Where's Matt?"

J.D paused, unsure of what to tell her.

But he didn't have to, because catching sight of Matt on the ground and the tranquilizer on the table, she put two and two together herself.

Turning to him and swallowing, she asked, "Is everyone all right?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Matt's-" he hesitated. "He'll wake up later."

"What happened to him?" It was Michael, staring wide eyed at both of them as he ripped off yet another pad of gauze, applying it silently to Rain's bloody neck.

Alice shook her head. "I don't know."

J.D was silent, staring at the floor as he suddenly realized it, what he'd forgotten about all these days.

"He had a file," he said quietly, looking up at all of them.

"And so did Spence."

y

They sat silently in the dark living room.

The lights were off, save for one lamp situated next to the armchair where Michael sat, staring at the file.

The rest of them were crowded onto the couch, onto the table, onto the floor, wherever they'd found a space to sit.

They were utterly silent as the realization sunk in. The reason for Matt's anger, for his violence.

Matt was mutating.

He had maybe an hour, maybe a day, maybe a week left. And then he'd be gone to them forever.

They had the anti-virus, yeah. That was the only thing that had stopped him from mutating in the first place- the frequent doses of the anti-virus Umbrella had fed him.

But even then, time between doses had been growing shorter every few weeks. It's effects on his bloodstream were obviously weakening as the Licker's contamination set in, renewing and strengthening it's fight against all antibiotics.

It had been over two weeks since Matt had been dosed with the anti-virus now.

Rain wondered how he had been able to last so long.

But then, as Michael had explained to her, he'd been put up against other Umbrella mutations while in captivity, forced to resort to the Licker blood flowing through his veins to stand up against it.

Here he was just forced to put up with Rain. Which, she liked to think, was still a worthy opponent- but come on, she wasn't one of Umbrella's fucking creations. Matt could have easily taken her, mutated or not.

Except he didn't have a choice anymore. Fear brought out the viral effects in him, rage brought out the same effects and he'd mutated- not fully, but partially, anyways- completely unintentionally.

They'd injected him with the anti-virus even before reading the files, Alice and Michael carrying him to the room the four of them shared and tucking him into the king-sized bed.

She supposed that's all they could do for now. Inject him periodically with the anti-virus.

Except there was only enough left in there for five more injections now. Alice had been smart enough to grab a bigger case, to replace the virus capsules with anti-virus ones instead.

Except, no matter how many capsules they had, the time between when they needed to use them would get shorter and shorter—

And after so many injections, it'd all be gone. Leaving Matt utterly fucked. Leaving all of them utterly fucked.

Because where would they be then? Running away from not only the Spence mutation, but from the Matt one as well? And where would they go?

Spence's file lay on the table too, utterly abandoned. The original plan had been to read over both files- but, after Matt's, nobody particularly cared about Spence anymore.

And who could blame them? Because hell, Rain cared about Matt. She knew that they were always fighting, always bashing heads- but she didn't care. They were still teammates, were still friends, and she didn't want to watch him mutate and die.

"So what are we supposed to do?"

She spoke the words without thinking, talking more to herself than anyone else, wanting only to break the deafening silence.

Alice looked at her. "Carry on Umbrella's treatments—"

"And what about when we run out?" Rain interrupted. She saw a stricken look pass across Alice's face and felt slightly guilty, but pressed on. It had to be said. "Because we will, eventually. And then we're completely fucked."

"Wait."

It was Michael, sitting up now, peering intently at the pages in front of him. They all turned to stare at him as if he were their God, reading to them their salvation—

And he redefined all aspects of the metaphor as he said, "There's another anti-virus." He looked up at them. "A better one."

J.D, looking confused, asked, "The same one Umbrella used to bring back the zombies?"

Michael shook his head. "No. That was just a strengthened rendition of the anti-virus. But this..." He shook the pages at them, practically glowing. "It has different adhesive qualities, attacks all parts of the body and completely reverses it's effects. It makes the victim stronger, in the end."

Rain leant forward, yanked the pages from his hands, scanning them frantically. She could feel J.D and Alice crowding around her, reading over her shoulder.

"It's never been tested on humans," Alice said quietly, pointing to the line of printing underneath what Michael had just explained to them. "What if it just makes him worse?"

Michael shrugged. "It might," he said honestly. "But at this point, we don't really have any other options."

Alice nodded, accepting the fact.

"Where would we find it?"

Michael hesitated. "It was housed in an underground lab of some sorts, was never moved- they referred to it as—"

"The Hive," Rain cut in.

He looked surprised. "You've heard of it?"

"Been there," J.D said with a small smirk.

He nodded. "Well, there's no guarantee it survived the infection and invasion from in October—"

Their doomed mission—

"But if anywhere, that's where it'll be." He paused. "It hasn't been tested yet, so I doubt Umbrella created more."

"Why didn't they just use it on Matt then?" Alice asked him, confusion creasing her brow.

"They wanted to test it out first, work out the kinks," he told her. "And- I think they were testing him. Trying to see what would happen if he mutated."

"Like some experiment?" Rain asked him, raising an eyebrow.

He nodded. "They called it "Nemesis"."

Alice hesitated before speaking. "Do you think- would Kaplan have been infected? The Licker scratched him too."

Michael looked thoughtful. "He should have been- except I don't think he was. He didn't show any side effects, anyway."

Rain crowded forward, trying to see the files Alice held now. "Does it mention any other test subjects?"

Alice shook her head. "No. Just Matt." She paused. "But it doesn't matter."

"Kaplan's gone, but Matt's still here. And there's no way I'm losing another team member to Umbrella's fucking war games."

They didn't move, all in solemn agreement, watching her as she stood up gracefully, tossing the files onto the table in front of her.

"We have to go back to the Hive."

End

A/N: Thanks for reading, please review! :) And again, please watch for "Into the Light", the next installment in this trilogy!