Bryan was running through the hallways on the Spencer Estate like a mouse in a maze. He knew Wesker would be impressed by his knowledge of his surroundings; it was just too bad that under these circumstances he had to act alone.
"Then again," he thought, "I'm not really alone, I'm part of an expert team, under the direction of Umbrella's greatest employee."
Bryan continued thinking that, as he took corners at a brisk pace, but he felt himself began to slow down, when the realization of how alone he really was began to catch up with him.
"Ingrid," he whispered, "I'm so sorry."
He stopped in the middle of one of the expansive halls of the mansion, and braced himself up against a pillar.
He began to have a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He missed Ingrid terribly, and wished that he had been quicker, even if just by a few seconds, at eliminating those S.T.A.R.S members; if he had, she'd still be here with him now.
The stomach cramp got worse.
"I guess this is how it feels to be lovesick," he said trying to maneuver into a more comfortable position, "that, or gas."
He felt a pain in his chest slowly getting worse and worse as he slid his back against the pillar and took a seat on the ground.
"I'm to young to be having a heart attack," he thought, "I'm in top physical condition, Umbrella wouldn't have it any other way."
He felt a cold sweat running through his body, and his vision became blurry. He began to shake, and everything around him grew dark and hazy.
"I…don't….understand," Bryan sputtered, as his teeth chattered together.
Then, just as quickly as it had began, everything returned to normal, and Bryan regulated his breathing while lying in a puddle of his own sweat.
"I just don't get it," he said to himself as he sat up and checked his pulse, "That's the third time this has happened in the last two months, what the hell is wrong with me?"
These "attacks" he had been having started out as cramped muscles, and then as time went by he seemed to unnaturally develop stronger limbs, keener eyesight, and even better hearing after each attack. But in recompense each attack got worse and worse every time.
Bryan slowly began to stand-up, and after regaining his bearings, he realized he had only been a few steps away from the correct dormitory before his little break down.
"Alright," he said to himself as he stood up and straightened out the wrinkles in his clothes, "let's finish this."
Bryan walked up to the door of Michael Johnson's dorm, and out of habit knocked on the door.
"Jesus Christ," he said, "who the hell am I kidding?"
He grabbed the doorknob and turned.
Click
The door was locked.
Bryan removed his pistol from his waist and shot one shell into the doorknob knocking the lock clear out of the door, and splintering wood all over the place.
"Lucy," Bryan shouted as he kicked the door in, putting on his thickest Puerto Rican accent, "I'm home!"
-----
Chris heard the gun shots coming from the end of the hallway. He knew it had to be Jill, or Wesker in trouble, if it had been Barry the shots would have been much louder. He ran until the hallway dead-ended , and all that was left was a staircase.
"What the hell," he thought, "I know the shots came from this direction."
There hadn't been a room the whole way from that room with the strange key-hole all the way to these stairs, so where could the shots have come from?
Just then he heard it.
It was soft at first, and hard to hear that it had been coming from the top of the step for quite sometime. It was sad sound, but very soft, and almost innocent.
It was a girl, and she was crying.
"Jill!" Chris thought.
He ran up the stairs, following the noise. If Jill had been shot, or hurt trying to shoot something then he'd have to radio for help. Chris had been in the air force for a long time, but he knew nothing about medically aiding a wounded ally.
"When it comes to being a fighter pilot," he thought as he checked his C/B radio to make sure it was still in working order, "there isn't much you can do for a downed ally ."
When he finally found the door that had the crying coming from the other side he hesitated before turning the knob. He began to wonder, if after all the weird happenings so far this evening, if he could trust his instincts, and just barge in hoping it was Jill. For all he knew it could just as easily be some kind of trap.
He withdrew his Beretta, and slowly turned the doorknob. When he opened the door he noticed that familiar odor begin to waft past his nose, and immediately went into attack mode slamming the door open, his gun aimed outward.
"Stop right there, you," he hesitated at what he saw, "scared, um…little girl? Wait, Rebecca?"
After taking a moment to realize who he was looking at, Chris lowered his pistol and ran to the aide of his fellow S.T.A.R.S. team member. She seemed to have been crying for quite some time now.
He could see that she must've gone through a serious ordeal to be this upset, but he figured if he could calm her down she could take him to the other Bravo Team members.
"Rebecca, it's alright, it's me Chris, I'm here now." He said wrapping his arms around her.
"Chris, I…he…well," Rebecca stuttered surprisingly in between gasps for breath and sniffles through her stuffed nose. She had thought she was alone, how long had other S.T.A.R.S. members been here?
"It's ok, just take a deep breath kiddo," comforting Rebecca reminded Chris of his younger sister Claire, it was just the kind of detachment he needed to try to make sense of this crazy evening.
"No," she said, pushing him back, "no, its not, I killed him." Rebecca said, sobbing.
"Killed who?" Chris asked.
Rebecca wiped her eyes and nose with her sleeve and then pointed over Chris's shoulder. As he turned around and saw what she was pointing at, the images of his sister were shattered and he was quickly re-introduced to the cold reality he was currently dealing with.
On the floor in front of him was his ally, and best friend, Forrest Speyer, dead, with a bullet wound right between his eyes.
"Rebecca," Chris said, with his back to her, "You did this?"
"You don't understand," Rebecca said, once again panting for breath, "he wasn't himself anymore, he was…he was—."
"A zombie." Chris cut her off solemnly.
"You know?" Rebecca asked.
"I'm beginning to understand," Chris said, "where are the others?"
"The others?" Rebecca asked.
"You know," he replied, "the rest of Bravo Team, why did you split up after the crash?"
"Oh," Rebecca said, "I don't know, I don't even know if they are all alive, let alone in the mansion. After the crash we found an overturned police transport vehicle, the convict had escaped, the guards murdered, and we split up to try to find the escapee. I found a train, and…and…" her eyes began to well up again.
Chris slowly got up from the corpse of his friend and stepped backwards. He turned to Rebecca and sat down next to her on the bed, rubbing her back.
"Relax, just speak slowly, I need you to tell me what happened." He said.
She took a deep breath and continued.
"I found this train, and everyone on the train was dead. Well, I thought they were dead. I even checked a few to see if I could save them, but they had no pulse. Then one of them got up and tried to attack me, but the convict, Billy Coen, saved my life."
"Billy Coen?" Chris asked, "Did you arrest him? Is he here with you?"
Rebecca paused, thinking of Billy, and how much she missed him.
"No. You see, the train started to move again, and Billy and I ended up in this strange Umbrella Training Facility. We ran in to all sorts of these undead things, as well as other strange monsters, and one of the scientists there had been transformed into a," she paused, "well, this may seem strange, but into a giant slug monster."
"A slug monster?" Chris asked.
"Yes. Something called the T-Virus had changed him, as well as all the other things into the walking-dead. Umbrella has been working on it top secret for many years both in Raccoon and here in the mountains, but there was an outbreak."
"Did you kill this slug thing?" Chris asked.
"No. In fact it would have killed me if Billy hadn't saved my life. We worked together to get out of that horrible place ali—." She stopped.
"What?" he asked, "What happened to Coen, is he still alive?"
"Um," Rebecca hesitated, she knew Billy was innocent, but Chris wouldn't listen, she had to cover for him, "No," she said solemnly, "there was an explosion, and the whole facility caved in, some sort of security self-destruct mechanism. As far as I know, I'm the only one who made it out alive."
"I'm sorry you had to deal with that Rebecca, and with this," Chris said pointing to what used to be Forrest Speyer on the floor, "But if you don't know where the rest of your team is we have to get moving. Will you be alright with me?"
"Yes," Rebecca replied. She wasn't sure if she was prepared to handle what lied ahead of them, but she knew she couldn't stay here…not alone.
The two stood up and began to head out of the room when a strange man ran right into Chris knocking them both to the floor.
"What the hell?" Chris screamed, "Who the fuck are you?"
---
Bryan had found the dog, long since expired, in its cage on the floor. Since it had not been infected to begin with, it seemed to have just died because after Johnson's death in the past few days, there had been nobody to feed it.
He felt bad for the poor, sad looking, slumped over sack of flesh.
"Hmph," he thought, "compassion is overrated."
He removed the key from the dog tag and then left the room. He knew he'd have to hurry to catch up with Chris, unless he'd be lucky enough to have found that whatever had caused those gun shots had decided to do a repeat performance on his poor prey.
After running like no other he had finally back-tracked to the Spencer Commons and then continued on down the hall in the same direction he had saw Chris go. He knew he had to have gone to the upper level grounds maintenance dorms, because that was the only way out of this particular wing of the house, is he kept going in this direction.
Bryan wasn't sure where he'd find Chris, but he hoped he could still remain hidden until he had a chance to create some kind of plan to corner him and get his revenge.
He reached the stair case and ran up the stairs, looking for some kind of evidence that Chris had been nearby.
He began to think of all the different ways he could trap Chris in this new wing of the house. He could leave him out on the balcony to the prey of the graveyard's residents, or a passing crow or two. Or he could lead him down and into the backyard of the mansion down to Lisa Trevor's illustrious little holding cell.
He shuddered at the thought.
After George Trevor had gone mad, Umbrella thought it was the perfect opportunity to take clear and dangerous advantage of the loved ones he left behind. His wife had been subject to the sexual lusts and desires of many a lonely scientist, and his daughter was destined to be the first carrier of a new virus strain, that was supposed to adapt to humans better, where the t-virus has so poorly failed.
The new virus was called the g-virus, but was still very much in the testing phase. It was clearly not ready for human development, but that had never stopped Umbrella before. After each treatment the girl slowly began to change, and mutate, until eventually she had lost control of her motor functions and had succumbed to the G-Virus. She was then locked, and shackled in an old gardener's shed on the grounds of the mansion, and monitored every day.
Bryan could only imagine what had happened to her since the outbreak. Then again, he didn't really want to.
Just as he was coming out of his daydream Bryan saw an open door and a light ahead, and he heard voices, but it was too late. He was running to fast to slow down in enough time to hide, and it seemed like whoever was in the room was getting ready to leave.
"Please don't let it be one of those zombies" Bryan repeated in his mind over and over again.
As the bodies stepped out into the hallway Bryan felt relief running through his body, followed by a heaping amount of pain as he crashed, face first into the body of the man he had been so elusively pursuing.
The two men crashed to the floor.
"What the hell?" Chris screamed, "Who the fuck are you?"
Bryan sat up slowly and shook his head to stop the room from spinning around him. He though as fast as he could to come up with a response that would leave him in the clear.
"Thank god," he said quickly and panicked, "Thank god you are here. I thought I was alone, I was so scared!"
"It's alright sir," Chris said, standing up and extending a helping hand down to Bryan, 'I'm with the Raccoon City S.T.A.R.S. team and I promise you everything is under control."
"Yes," Bryan replied as he stood up and an eerie smile swept over his face, "that it is."