Merely two days had passed since Kain's awakening and already he knew something was amiss. He knew from the very moment he emerged from the manhole in the city streets that it would not stop there, that the evil that William had created would slowly consume the entire city. At first he believed it was the humanity in him, poking through his weakened state and infecting him with the human mental illness of paranoia, but now that he was stronger, not fully restored but stronger, his steely vampiric mind was uncovering a few details.

Kain had been trying to concoct a plan to escape this world and return to Nosgoth and so decided that it would be wiser to maintain a low profile. Because of this, he had been feeding off of the blood of beggars and other homeless folk that no one cared for whether they lived or died, and had discovered something quite unusual. The blood of them had been unclean, tainted, and contaminated with a dark taste to it. Kain recognised its flavours as illness, but an illness like no other he had ever encountered. As he clutched the skin of their throats while taking their blood, their skin did not spring back. They were decaying under their skin. The skin of dead bodies doesn't have any elasticity to it, and thus their bodies were behaving like corpses. He even had a tough time trying to get some of the really far-gone beggars to bleed at all. It was like they were dead, only walking around like a living person. Kain had died once, a long time ago, and although he was still one of the living dead, he maintained many qualities alike to the living: Sentient thought, beating heart, breath, -

- "And a soul…" It seemed there was barely anything to separate the dead from the living and Kain had hated the prejudice living for so long that he was blinded by a prejudice of his own. No matter how he would run from it, the living dead and the living were too identical… "But not now…"

Something was happening now. Kain had been keeping an eye on the commerce in this world that he had awakened in. This city was called 'Raccoon City', and it had been experiencing some 'problems' recently. Cannibal murders in the woods, and a team of soldiers called the S.T.A.R.S sent in to investigate, but most of them died and the ones that survived told stories of undead monsters and a chemical leak. A virus leak. It had taken Kain a lot of investigative work around the underworld of Raccoon to uncover that little morsel of information. This city's best kept secret, it seems, is that allegedly the company responsible for the horrors in the woods provided over two thirds of the jobs for the inhabitants of this city. 'Umbrella' was the name of this medical company, and it ruled over this city like the Serafan vampire hunters ruled cruelly over Meridian, back in Nosgoth.

One of the most recurring stories Kain had heard tell was of walking corpses; zombies, that were the result of the virus leak in the woods. Kain visited the alleged spot where the S.T.A.R.S lost so many men, and all he found was a huge steaming pile of burnt wood and rubble. With all the evidence destroyed, Kain had little to link what had been going on in the woods, with what was starting to happen in the city, and what had happened with William, but he knew they were all connected by this company 'Umbrella'. All that was left as to find out how exactly…

The cannibal murders had started up again, and the wiser inhabitants of Raccoon City who believed the rumours of zombies and monsters had been trying to leave the city, but with no success. The Chief of police 'Brian Irons' had barricaded the cities exits, claiming he didn't want the 'Cannibal murderous' to skip town, but Kain knew he had put it up just as much to keep in the inhabitants as well as the 'cannibals'. Everything was set for a major disaster. The only thing needed was the spark of fear that would send things into the downward spiral of confusion and calamity that would end in the total destruction of their precious so called 'civilisation'. Kain awaited it with childish glee.

Right now, the humans were almost heralding the beginning of their damnation. Some sort of carnival was taking place, the blindingly bright, colourful lights and ear splittingly music making Kain feel increasingly nauseous. His fine and delicate vampiric senses weren't used to such torture. Human senses must have been so startlingly primitive if they could find this sensory torture even remotely pleasurable. Kain rested his tired head against a stone pillar. While the masses of partying humans frolicked in the psychedelic light, Kain sheltered in the shade of a poorly lit parking lot merely meters from the action. The air was cold and it was drizzling slightly, and Kain sighed a cold cloudlike puff of condensation into the air. He was waiting for someone with fresher blood to stumble pass; the party going spirit in their blood would be a much-welcomed change to the rotten blood of the beggars and infected he had been feasting on so far. Kain had needs, and he couldn't stand decaying blood any longer.

The party atmosphere and large amounts of alcohol they had been no doubt indulging in would lead the law enforcement officers to believe that maybe the victim had fallen on a broken bottle or had had a bad trip. Kain did enjoy making his victims suffer a little before he killed them, but there was no sense in giving away your prescience with inefficient butchery; he wasn't a fledgling vampire anymore. He hoped that his luck so far would hold out and a tasty morsel would fall into his lap, like a young woman or a pure virgin – creatures whom had particularly exquisite blood, but the only flies that had fallen into his web so far were beggars asking him for a 'dime', - what he assumed to be the currency in this world. He was hunting out in the open like this because he'd had enough of the smelly bastards. When they asked him for a 'buck' or a 'dime' he didn't even dignify them with the acknowledgement of their existence, and if they spat an insult under their breath as they parted penniless from his company, then God help them… He'd finished off more than a few of those stinky old farts that way…

The music stopped briefly at one point for a speech from the piggish Chief of police. Kain remembered how he instantly decided he hated the man the moment he marched onto the platform with all those microphones pointed at him, telling the mindless people how safe they were in their 'pen'. This 'Brian Irons' man reminded him of the vampire Vorador; a perverted, decadent old fool, and both Vorador and this mortal reeked of the same perverted sadism. Granted, Vorador had certainly cleaned up his act these past few decades, but old habits die hard .. .

Kain remembered the signet right Vorador had given him, and he remembered how he was wearing it now, and he smiled to himself slightly; Vorador was one of his own kind, not this slimy mortal man on that stage up there. Even Vorador deserved more respect than that. –

- A human creature raced from the mass of party going crowds and ran heavily into Kain. He instantly smelt the blood of the mortal washing over him in its panic. He smelt the pheromones in its blood and felt his spirits lift; it was a female, a young female in a panic. She had fallen into his web and he felt the tingle of excitement race through him, stimulating his sleeping soul, bringing him out of his deep thought and back to life like a deranged animal. He clutched her shoulders hard, preventing her from getting away and stopping her from struggling, and how she struggled… -

-But then something clicked in his mind and he suddenly realized there was something very wrong with this woman.

"Let me go – let me go!" His eyes suddenly broke free from the cloud of bloodlust and he became suddenly aware of the human female he had clutched in his hands. They focused on her, and they saw her upset fear, saw her kick and struggle ferociously. Saw that she was only a child of about 12 years old.

He was holding a pretty little blonde girl harshly in his grasp and he stared in wonderment at her; He couldn't remember the last time he'd seem a real human child, except maybe on posters. Back in Nosgoth, the humans never let their children out on the streets. They feared what both the Serafan and the vampires would do to them if they were caught. The closest Kain had ever been to a human child was hearing the bleat of a newborn baby from the upstairs window of a tavern back in the city of Meridian. He remembered staring up at the window in bewilderment for so long … He couldn't remember why, he didn't know why even then, yet he watched that window for the best part of the night, right up until morning…

"Just let me go or I'll call the cops! I'm not a kid – I'm not stupid! My parents say I'm very competent and responsible for my age"-

-" But you still got caught, didn't you, little girl?" Kain said, his voice crooning low and soft, so soft, part of his dark soul screamed out for violence, for bloodshed, for him to end this tiny life and end it painfully.

But he didn't

She glanced back at him only for a split second, her eyes meeting his briefly, and she was obviously startled by what she saw. Kain's skin was as pale as the purest marble and his eyes were a golden yellow – and it didn't look synthetic like the strange fashions he had seen. He terrified the little girl, and it made him smile. Her eyes were pail blue, a deep endless blue like the ocean, like

"Like William's" Kain thought. The girl looked so much like him now that he noticed; only she was blonde, and-

- And it was a coincidence.

"Why are you scared of me, little girl?" He asked gently.

"Because you're a freak who won't let me go!" And she kicked him hard in the groin, as hard as she could he sensed, but it didn't hurt him even slightly. This scared her even more and she upped the desperation in the distressed struggling. "I gotta go! I gotta go!" She whined, her fair voice breaking down into squeaks, like a small trapped, defenceless animal.

"Go where?" Kain asked, attempting to take advantage of her desperation to find out… to find out that which he didn't know.

"To the R.P.D!"

"The what?"

"The Raccoon Police Department! My mother called and said it was too dangerous to stay at home!"

Kain let her go and she catapulted off into the crowd like a tensed spring.

"It would seem that your mother speaks the truth…" he said to himself quietly as he watched the child disappear into the crowd like smoke into thin air…-

-And then another human ran into him, this time, a young woman of about 20. She was rambling her apologies like an idiot, giggling and correcting herself… she was obviously under the influence of alcohol. Back in Nosgoth he wouldn't lay a finger on a filthy drunk, but he sensed her blood wasn't infected, and that was as good as it got in this town.

She was too busy jabbering like an idiot to realize the danger she was now in. Kain clutched the back of the woman's head by her dark hair firmly in his grasp and covered her mouth tightly with his other hand, then before she even had the chance to realize she was going to die, he twisted her head, the familiar snap of bone greeting his pointed ears. She fell limp in his arms, now nothing more than just a sack of blood, nothing more than she had ever been to him. Kain took her blood right there and then, confident than the lively commotion merely meters from where he stood wouldn't notice, so immersed in all their uproar were they. -

- And someone screamed. Kain dropped his victim to the floor in haste, believing at first the screams were directed at his nauseating deed, but he shrieks had arisen from some place towards the west side of the masses of crowds; he had not caused the fear and disorder that was beginning to break lose like a rash all across the west wing of the carnival. Suddenly the sense of fear, desperation and terror spread throughout the masses as if someone had taken a match to a flammable parchment. The crowd whisked around each other in a haphazard confusion as something within them was causing great anguish and terror.

"Oh God – what are they!" He heard yelled from the swarming mob, and it lead Kain to believe that his suspicions were coming true. Those beggars he had been feasting on while he was still particularly weak had very bad blood, almost like the blood of a long dead corps, and now those long dead corpses were walking around, and from what Kain could see, they were walking around and trying to feed on people. The zombies that had been lingering in the woods had now begun their conquest of the city. If they were sentient beings, Kain might have even considered an alliance with them, but they were mindless animals, stalking blindly with their cataract eyes, mouths gaped open in a hungry yawn and limp, rotting, holey skin loosely hanging off their bones.

Kain backed further away into the parking lot and watched the turmoil coolly, calculating a way out of this situation –

- And something grabbed at his leg.

"No!" The very victim he had drained of blood literally moments ago was now clawing hungrily at his leg, puling his boot closer to its salivating, tatty lips. A hungry mew rose up from its mouldy, dead mouth, but before it had a chance to plant a single bite on Kain's metal boots, its skull was smashed under his foot, bits of brain and dark, thick liquids blossoming out in an blast of red and sinewy bone. The creature flopped back down into its final resting place, and now, looking back up suddenly, Kain saw an additional three more lurching towards him from the city streets.

The zombies were making light work of the crowd, mowing them down as though they were nothing, and by this time, armed police officers from the R.P.D had arrived in large blue trucks. The back doors of the vehicles burst open and swarms of machine gun packing cops in body armour swarmed out and assumed defensive positions behind a haphazard barricaded of police cars.

To be honest, as Kain took up a position behind the barricade alongside a small batch of civilians the cops had rescued, he was quite impressed with the order the cops demonstrated in a crisis situation. Back in Nosgoth, when Kain took out the Serafan lord, the entire Serafan order crumbled pathetically, mindless fools that they are, but here were these humans organising an effective attack force with the lack of any real orders.

"Dear God – What's going on?" One of the civilians bleated pathetically to Kain with their hands over his head, hunched up like a whipped dog.

"I can honestly say I do not have a clue." Kain responded calmly. His nerve in this situation was intensifying the frightened look in the small huddle of terrified civilians; a young woman and two men.

Kain peered over the police cars to get a better look of the situation. His eyes widened as he realized the sudden severity of the situation; nothing but zombies as far as the eye could see. There was the occasional squealing citizen, tripping over backwards and being engulfed in ravenous zombies, but other than that, everything was behind this barricade of cop cars and S.W.A.T vehicles; men women and children all finding shelter from the nightmare.

The cops fired and fired and fired and the sound at the front line was thunderous. Hundreds of officers, all armed with machine guns or shotguns or even pistols were firing with everything they had –

- And it wasn't even slowing them down. Those monsters weren't even feeling their gunfire and the zombie front was now only about fifty feet away from their barricade. The humans were now growing desperate, and even civilians were now running up to the front line and firing their pistols on the creatures with handguns they thought they'd never have to use in self-defence. Some children were even picking up and throwing empty bottles at them, bottles that were emptied only moments ago at the party that had to have such a disgusting end.

Kain rose to his feet. He had no doubts in his mind as to the fate he would receive if he waited here any longer. –

- "Hey!"

Kain inwardly winced. A young officer with spiky dark blue hair and black-framed glasses darted up to Kain. The boy wiped his damp fringe out of his face; a fringe damp with the terror-sweat that was running in large salty beads down is face. The boy was wielding a handgun and despite his 'fresh-out-of-academy' appearance, he seemed to be quite able to handle himself.

"Hey pal!" He called out again in his irritating voice, slapping a hand firmly on Kain's shoulder. "You can't go anywhere out there! Those monsters are all over the place! You're better off here, sir." –

- Kain batted the boys' hand violently from his shoulder. "Don't presume you can order me around, boy." And with that he left the barricade behind, walking astonishingly leisurely down one of the many side – alleys that networked through the city.

The boy cop stood in flabbergast amazement for a few moments, then; "Hey, asshole! I'm talking to you!" He darted after Kain.

Meanwhile, Kain thought he had lost the upheaval back at the barricade but he was very much mistaken. As he made his way down the tight corridors and back alleys or Raccoon City, he saw at least three people lose their lives off in the distance, such as at the end of the corridor, or hear the desperate screams for help just around the next corner and be greeted only with a pack of zombie tearing red flesh out of a freshly killed carcass. Kain didn't fancy himself much as a scavenging jackal and if the zombie made a kill, he wouldn't dispatch them in order to take their meal from them. The whole procedure reeked of cowardice, and he only fed from the corpse William had left him because he was starving.

Kain found more than a few fresh corpses of cops in those back alleys, and he searched their bodies for ammunition as he went. He also fed on the ones that weren't too far gone, for he sensed that he might not be able to get another chance to feed on fresh blood for quite some time after this. He managed to scrape together quite a surprising amount of ammunition this way; enough to get him to a safe house of some sort. He only hoped the gun would do more to protect his life than it had done for its previous owner, William.

The words of the small blonde child rang through his mind; "The Raccoon Police Department! My mother called and said it was too dangerous to stay at home!" Was this a safe haven? Kain didn't suppose it would be a completely foolproof plan; the limp bodies of dead men and women in R.P.D uniform could attest to that, but it would be better than waiting out in the open to die. He imagined wasting his last moments running dangerously low on ammunition and dodging zombies aimlessly with no purpose in it.

"God dammit - I said wait the hell up!" And Kain winced again as he realized that the annoying young cop had chased him all through the system of alleyways. Kain pretended he didn't hear him and soldiered on, but it was hard to pretend you hadn't noticed someone when he would run up in front of you and wave their arms in your face like they were drowning or something.

"Why did you follow me?" Kain barked suddenly, taking the young human by a shocked surprise.

"Why!" He asked in an almost shriek. "Cus I'm a cop, that's why! It's my job to protect civilians in a situation like this and right now it looks like you're the only guy around here still alive worth protecting!"

"I don't want your help."

" No but you're gonna need it!"

"I have a weapon!" Kain barked, now finding this more than a little irritating and was really starting to lose his temper with the ill-mannered human. "I need nothing from you!"

"Do you have this though?" And he raised his handgun.

"Yes, I do have a gun." And Kain raised his handgun.

"No! That's only an 'VP70'! It fires 9mm parabellum. Now MY gun is a Desert Eagle; top of the line. You can drop an elephant with a few shots from this."

"A well placed bullet from my gun can do just the same." And Kain continued defiantly on his way. Or at least he tried to.

"Hey, you moron! What make you think you can plant a bullet firmly in the temple of a zombie! You saw all those officers back at the barricade and they're all probably…"

-The boy realized what he was about to say and he stopped, hanging his head and his eyes filling with a pathetic kind of sorrow. -

-"You were going to say that they're probably all dead by now, aren't you?" Kain said, helping him finish.

"We should probably go back and check it out." He said hurriedly. "Search for survivors and" – Kain was already starting to leave. – "HEY! Get your ass back here coward!" –

- Kain froze.

"I am no coward." He spat, turning viciously back to the boy that had insulted him so, his white hair flicking round him. He was clearly unnerved the young cop, but he persisted –

- "Oh, so it looks like I struck a nerve with that one, huh?" He nodded to himself, coercing himself into a very dangerous situation. " You know you dress like a real hard man, but your really just a big pussy, like all the other guys who dress like you, I mean, what real man wears black lipstick and nail varnish?" Kain's eyes were wide and burned at the insolent idiot. What the ridiculous adolescent didn't know was that they were their natural colour, at least for a vampire, and Kain took great pride in his vampiric nature more than anything else. Yet the boy continued. " And you wear your hair long like a girl! How can anyone take you seriously looking like that? You expect to get a job this way?" He stopped right there and then because his discourteous remarks had proved effective enough for Kain to be marching right towards him with that 'I'm-gonna-kill-you' look in his yellow eyes. The young cop backed off as fast as he could but Kain kept coming. He started to wish that maybe he should have gone about leading this white haired freak back to the barricade in a fashion that wouldn't result in him getting his ass kicked.

Too late for second thoughts now. Kain had quickened his pace and was marching down the tight and inescapable corridor towards the young cop like a steamroller; anything in his way was batted aside like it was nothing; trash cans, heavy metal doors… The cop even climbed over a stack of a dozen bicycles chained to the walls annoyingly blocking the corridor completely and Kain just tore them out of his way like they were made of paper. The chains splintered off the brick as they were ripped out of their holster in the red brick wall.

"Hey, calm down man." The cop tried, raising up his hands in apology but not being so unwisely trusting to stop backing away. Kain didn't batter an eyelid at his feeble attempt at and apology; it was more like an attempt at a stalemate than anything else, and Kain never went for the stalemate when total vengeance was to be had. "Dude, those B.M.X's you just ripped off the wall don't come cheap you know!" But inside he was staring to wonder whether he was entirely human… If zombies were running around out there, then what the hell was running around right in front of him? No matter how strong a man he was, no human being could rip a bunch of bikes from the wall with a single whip of the back of his hand, especially a tall and thin man like Kain.

The cop tripped and stumbled back out into the street, narrowly avoiding the lunging zombies that greeted him at the mouth of the alleyway. Kain suddenly became aware that the young officer had lead him back to the barricade out of fear for his safety, however, there was no roar of gunfire, no loud explosions, no screams…

The young officer was hovering between the exit of the alleyway and the streets with a shocked expression on his now dirtied face.

"Yo, you gotta check this out…"

Kain allowed himself to forget his rage for the time being. He took notice of young officer fire a round from his Desert Eagle into the exploding skulls of the mewing, hungry creatures. His weapon was impressively powerful…-

- And as Kain exited the alleyway, into the street he had fled from merely moments ago, he was walking in onto a scene of apocalypse. Corpses of freshly dead cops were strewn across their barricading vehicles they had given their lives to protect. Blood leaked slowly out from piles of corpses, the last remnants of a courageous last stand. Kain pictured their end; back to back in a circle, firing on the wave after wave of zombies closing in on them so agonisingly slowly…

The young officer trod the derelict grounds of the last bastion of human resistance with a strangled, disgusted look of sheer devastation on his face. Running his fingers roughly though his tangled hair, he looked as though he even might cry at the sickening sight of carnage and blood, vomit and viscera… Kain on the other hand didn't even batter an eyelid. His vampiric nature had a noticeable effect on his perception of carnage. That which would have disgusted him in life, only served to inflame his hunger in death. He didn't have any idea of the true suffering around him, and if he did, then he just simply didn't care.

Kain rolled over the corps of a boy in his late-teens that was limp and bloodied on the asphalt with a kick of his hard metal boot. Once rolled over, Kain emotionlessly prised the double-barrelled shotgun from the dead boys clutched fingers. They were still warm, but there was no way he could be alive; most of his face was missing, leaving only a ragged blackish-red hole with unrecognisable bits of bone protruding from it. That was the only wound on his otherwise unblemished body. –

-And suddenly the thought occurred to him that he was much too unblemished to have been killed by zombies. Zombies would ravage the bodies they fed on, tearing cloth and bone, going for the soft, succulent, tender parts of the flesh first, likes the stomach or the throat. The face was a very had and bony piece of meat in compared to these parts and Kain doubted they would go for the face straight away. Maybe if they were hungry and trying to get to the rich and fatty texture of the brain, but certainly not when there were so many corpses strewn across the road filled with soft, luscious delights. Kain had been well fed prior to the takeover of the barricade, but thinking of it almost made Kain want to feed himself. –

- But enough of that. It seemed most likely that there were much more than just zombies loose on these streets and it wouldn't be much safer for long; the city had been overwhelmed by the zombies numbers before, Kain didn't wish to see how well it would fare when the thousands of slaughtered citizens would join the ranks of the undead…

"God you sick…." Murmured the young cop involuntarily on seeing Kain rip the weapon from the grasp of the mangled boy. Kain was pleased to see the sick revulsion on his face, hand clasped over his mouth, cringing desperately to keep himself from vomiting. The weapon Kain was now holding wore the blood of its former owner over it and this seemed to further disturb the young officer. "How can you touch that?"

"I don't think I quite understand you…" Replied Kain, unaware that it was infact his heartless conduct and not the actual carnage that was disturbing the young officer so.

"Hello!" Said the officer unnecessarily melodramatically. "It's covered in a dead dudes blood!"

Kain simply just looked down at the firearm with humanly unbearable blankness, then wiped the blood from its barrel with his red shawl-like clothing, rudely and with a lack of feeling that had all the hallmarks of a sociopath.

"Is that better?" Kain grumbled, finding this interaction tedious.

"NO!" He squealed, suffering from a minor freak out, though Kain sensed that much of this had been put on… "How can you go around just rolling over dead bodies and shit?" The young cop protested, massaging his temples, which was a slight thing he could do to ease the situation; the surroundings gave the impression that a bloody apocalypse had recently been and gone. Things were on fire far off in the distance, and the great plumes of tainted smoke bathed the sky a foggy blood red. The wind carried the faint ghostly screams from all over the city, and also the smell; the stench of rotting, shitty corpses that Kain had noticed starting to crop up as early on as –

-" …As a couple of hours after I had arisen from the sewers; after the scientist had given his life to protect his bio-weapons…"

Kain discovered that Umbrella worked with disease and medicine, and Raccoon City had certainly come down with a bad case of something… So maybe William had caused this current leak that had taken over the city…

"…And William wouldn't have caused the leak if he didn't come back for me…." However Kain didn't feel bad about being partially responsible for this massacre; after all, they were only human. It wasn't like they were irreplaceable. Those damn things could propagate like rabbits under the right circumstances, which was just about every circumstance... Human reproduction reminded him of bacteria; spreading uncontrolled across the face of the Earth… and with no natural predators in this world to keep their numbers down, you could barely breathe without coming into contact with another parasitic human cattle. A good disaster like this was the only thing that could keep their numbers down.

"Hey, are you still listening?" Squealed the young cop, snapping Kain out of his deep thought and leaving his nerves rather ruffled and frayed.

"No, I'm not. I don't really want to talk to you at all, but I feel that to have your knowledge and experience in firearms on my side then it would be beneficial to me."

"God, you're weird… All you seem to care about it yourself. Even Chief Irons would give a shit about bloodshed even slightly!"

That chief Irons of his was indeed a callas being, but he was still human, and so suffered from the same physical and metal frailties that all mortals do.

"I work with bloodshed." He told him, trying to let on as little and as much as possible. "My trade is death. Broken bodies mean nothing to me."

"…. Are you… an assassin?" He asked sheepishly, trying to piece together the riddles Kain had given him, like scraps to a dog hungry for the taste of information, for some kind of rational sense to what he was seeing, to what was happening to him.

"I work for no man. I am my own killer."

"…?" He didn't know how to react to that disgustingly frank response; he didn't want to believe that Kain was any kind of law-breaker. He needed Kain to stay alive; safety was in numbers, but being the kind of person he was to enlist himself into the police force, Kain didn't think the young and wholehearted officer could morally stand helping a real murderer to survive.

"It would be unwise to remain in the open as we are now." Kain explained. "The creatures that did this could decide to come back."

"Hey, who died and made you leader? I'm the only officer left alive around here so you should be doing things my way!"

"Then what do you suggest?" Kain asked, checking to see whether the shotgun was loaded in a manner that spoke his boredom.

"… Uh, we should go to the R.P.D." Said the young officer, suggesting exactly what Kain had told him moments ago, making himself appear foolish. "There's probably some sort of crisis centre set up there with medics and S.W.A.T and stuff."

"Unless of course it has been overrun too, just like this barricade."-

-"No!" He hollered suddenly. "That's not a possibility! It's impossible! It can't happen!"

"Face it boy. Everyone is dead. We need to leave now or suffer the same fate."

"NO. We're going to the R.P.D first, no more questions."

Kain didn't really feel in the mood to argue. If the human wanted to take them to the R.P.D then Kain had no reason to object. There was no way he could see to get back to Nosgoth, so why should going to the R.P.D be any more different to him than going anywhere else in this plagued world? No matter where he goes he'll be surrounded by vermin. This way at least he'll be spending his time doing something more productively instead of wasting his time hiding in the shadows as he expected to do until he found a way back to Nosgoth.

The boy was trying the radio inside one of the patrol cars with no reply, of course. He kept trying however, half hanging out from the vehicle, leaning over yet another oddly mutilated corps that was slouched in the drivers seat.

The zombies should have dragged the man out of his car onto the floor where they could dog pile his struggling body and rip into the soft flesh, overpowering him. However, the body's face had again been smashed through, like a pole had been thrust into his face with enormous power. Only very few of the corpses that littered this area were missing their soft flesh, indicating zombie attack. Most of them had had their faces decimated and had been tossed into a pile, like something did this systematically, indicating some sort of sick intelligence…

"We need to find cover." Kain told the officer, showing an unusual amount of concern by letting him know what he was thinking. "The zombies have neither the strength nor the intelligence to kill these humans the way they have been killed."

"'These humans'?" He repeated, standing up and turning to face Kain with a sickened expression on his face. "God, you speak like… like you're some kind of monster…"

Kain resisted the tantalising urge to answer his statement.

"And what makes you think I care whether the zombies did this or not? These people are dead! That's all the should matter!"

"I'm sure we could handle a zombie or two." Kain said, almost bragging. "But an encounter with something strong and calculated enough to systematically destroy every single one of these officers faces and survive… well, I'm not sure that with our current experience, we'd do well…"

"What makes you think these guys didn't nail it?"

"Do you see whatever did this around here?" Kain motioned out to the vastness, paved with blood and viscera. "Meaning that it must have left in search of further victims, and when it can't find any because of the zombie attack, it's going to come back here."

"Where the meat is…"

"Precisely…"

The young officer was finally beginning to sober up from being drunk with shock and sorrow. He ran his fingers through his hair one last time before attempting to take charge of the situation, trying to apply his training even now…

"Okay then!" He said in an energetic huff. "I'll find a patrol car and we'll be on our way!"

"To the RP.D?"

"Well where'd you think we'll be going?" He asked sarcastically, inspecting the patrol car-barricade for a car that wasn't too unpleasant inside.

"Well if the car has enough fuel then why not be done the city completely?" Kain asked, his voice rough with an edge of irritation.

"There could be people hiding out in there…" He explained, his voice becoming soft, but not ceasing to anxiously examine each and every patrol car. "People that took refuge, and we have to pick them up and get them outta hell."

"Why should we bother?"

The young officer got up again from rooting around in the patrol car and stared at him in disbelief.

"Well what would you think if you were stuck in the R.P.D and you were going to die because some white haired weirdo is to much of a chicken shit to bother?"

"How dare you call me a coward!" Kain barked. Anyone else would have shut up there and then, but the young officer was so intent on the possible rescue of innocent civilians that he continued to provoke him.

"Because it's true isn't it? You're so intent on saving your own ass that you forget there are other people out there suffering more than you! You are sick!" He hollered, pointing a finger violently at him. "You've been nothing but evil and cold hearted, but you're just hiding behind that because you're too much of a wimp to do anything that takes real guts!"

Kain trudged closer to the young man, the same way he had done to William to exact his power and dominance over the boy. –

-But it didn't work. -

"Hey! Don't even give me that shit again, asshole!" He barked commandingly, surprisingly to Kain, snatching at his gun and aiming it at him with both hands. "I'm sick of all your bullshit! Now I know you're a freak with the strength of the hulk but you're gonna have to fucking play nice for all this! We've got enough things trying to kill us so we don't need to be looking over our shoulders at each other all the time too!"

There was a long silent pause, in which you could hear again the screams and pleas of help echoing eerily through the icy air, then-

"Very well, boy. But be warned; if you dare to dream you can intimidate me, then you are sorely"-

-Wrraaaghw!-

A monstrous roar filled the night air, shattering the eerie atmosphere and the ambience exploded into a state of petrified panic, as if it had just been splattered with blood.

Kain could instantaneously distinguish the source of the mangled bellow, such were his finely tuned vampiric sense, but the human officers head darted from side to side, the reverberating echoes dancing around the cityscape clearly confusing his laughably limited human sense of hearing.

"Over there!" And Kain pointed out the source.

It rounded an empty blue R.P.D S.W.A.T team van with heavy, pounding steps, yet though each was slow and thunderous, it covered just as much ground in one stride as a human would in three. It was well over the size of a normal human, quite possibly over eight feet tall.

It was bald; its skin rough and disgustingly tainted all over and its teeth were exposed in a lipless grin. One of its eyes was stitched over across its smarmy grinning face, and the one that was exposed burned at you with hatred more powerful than the fury of a million suns. It was wearing a black leather trench coat and huge boots, and each of its titanic fists was as large as a human head, and as it caught sigh of Kain and of the young cop with its one piercing, viscous eye, it boomed in an aggressive and hideously inhuman voice-

"S.T.A.R.S"

"The 'Special Tactics And Rescue Squad'." Thought Kain. "The one group of people still alive that could still pose a threat to 'Umbrella'… And I assume this is here to eliminate them…" Well it seemed to be eliminating everyone but its primary targets… maybe it was still in the process of intercepting the surviving S.T.A.R.S members…

Now was not the time for petty speculation. The monster paused very briefly, maybe to decide which one of them it should go for next; the stony faced vampire that was displaying no fear, yet was armed with the inferior weapon, or the young and weak cop who was clearly afraid yet possessed the most powerful weapon.

The creature didn't seem to care which was the strongest, and instead lurched towards the one that was closest to it; Kain.

Kain unloaded a round from the shotgun he claimed off the corps of the young man, the round exploding onto the chest of the beast in a spray of debris and purple blood but wasn't enough to make the monster even flinch. It was nowhere near enough. The creature marched ever onward, its one spiteful eye fixed maliciously on its target. Kain didn't back down. He didn't even back away, and as it closed in on him, from the palm of its left sprang a disgusting fatty purple tentacle, the same thickness as the gory holes in the faces of so many of the bodies that littered this barricade.

Kain aimed the powerful weapon at the face of the closing in monster, determined to make this one shot count, and pulled the trigger, the shotgun shell exploding on contact, but it didn't seem to effect it. –

- An explosion sounded and the monster recoiled, snarling a deep mildly distracted growl from the force of the blast. It wasn't until Kain looked back at the young police officer that he realized the powerful series of explosions was coming from the weapon he held in his hands; the handgun he had called 'Desert Eagle'. The boy held it firmly at arms length, and with good reason; the recoil caused by the sheer power of the blasts was so strong that with each shot, it bucked from his hands so ferociously that it was flung over his head, stopped only by his hands, clinging feebly to the weapon.

The gigantic, ferocious, yet by no means mindless beast turned its attention from Kain to the boy it perceived to be more of a threat to it, then suddenly, without any warning, it threw its black leather clad arms into the air and it roared a violent and mangled roar. The boy was terrified, eyes wide with fear, but impressively he didn't let his fear control him. He didn't freeze on the spot quivering in fear like so many Kain had seen in his time; he didn't even stick to his corner childishly like the suicidal Sarafan vampire hunters of Nosgoth. The monster dashed at him at incredible speed and as it swan, the boy ducked and dived across its opposite side, completely dodging the attack-

- However not as completely as Kain originally thought…

The young cop rolled across the floor and back into a standing position, but he was hunched over, clutching his arm in pain as blood blossomed from the freshly cut wound. The pain registered in his face only for a second before he ignored it, snatching at his firearm with his good arm and spinning around to face the monster. A series of explosions sounded, but the shots were greatly compromised by the fact that he had to hold the Desert Eagle in one hand. It almost bucked completely from his grasp with each thunderous shot, yet for all his injury, which was now bleeding so freely it leaked onto the floor in a dark and inky puddle… The scent was so strong, like an intoxicating, rich perfume… Kain's eyes fluttered shut in ecstasy of the smell…-

- But they darted open again at the scratchy sound of the boys scream. He opened his golden eyes just in time to see the monster swing its tree-trunk of an arm and bring it across the boys chest, fly swatting him at least fifteen feet, the unmistakable sound of the snapping of bones alerting Kain's senses that the monster had broken a rib or two… When his body struck the floor, he rolled a further ten feet before slamming into a blue S.W.A.T vehicle, coming to a painful stop. Blood was creeping out of the corner of his mouth and he wiped it away weakly, reaching for his weapon

-But it wasn't there-

His eyes widened when he caught sight of his weapon, just next to the boots of the huge beast that had injured him so severely… it stepped over the gun as it closed in on him in response, all he could do was try to escape, try to run, but with his incredible injury he couldn't even get to his feet…

Kain watched this curiously, silently debating with himself whether he should help the crippled boy or not, but in the end, he realized he was watching was could very well become his end… he shook his head, denying that this could become his own fate, but decided that the only way he could prove this to himself beyond doubt that he could survive was by 'helping' that boy… If he couldn't even protect the life of that young officer, then what hope did he have for surviving himself?

Feeling a part of him wince with a mild twinge of regret, Kain forced himself into a run. Barrelling into the side of the humongous trench coated monster, Kain drove his shoulder into the beast with all his might. The monster was slammed off its disastrous course and was catapulted off, crashing thunderously into a squad card. A slight tinkle of metal was the last sound from the now totalled car. The thing wasn't moving, but Kain didn't assume it would stay that way for long... He turned his attention to the boy, who had given up looking distressed and astonished by Kain's inhuman strength and instead nestled his wounded arm in the other, rocking it gently as though the tender movement would make any real difference. He was dumbstruck. That was the only way to describe it. His eyes were wide and his pupils thoroughly dilated, glazed over with a kind of purest terror, like the boy had seen a vision of his own death. Maybe he had…

"Get up." Kain commanded down to the crippled boy, still leaning against the blue S.W.A.T van, not bothering to soften the tone of his voice. Social graces would have to wait when that monster could get back up at any minuet.

"No…" he replied softly slowly shaking his head. Kain frowned in a confused disgust before trying again.

"Get up, now." And this time his words were punctuated by a rough tug at his good arm. "You'll die if you stay here any longer."

The boys' eyes suddenly fixated on Kain's with a dream like quality about them, like he had just been unwillingly enlightened with a grave knowledge of the truth, something that even Kain hadn't realised yet.

"…There's no point…" The resignation in his voice was a painful contrast to his 'never-say-die' attitude he wore seconds ago, before his oozing injury had been inflicted…

"This is not a debate." Kain growled and tugged at him harder, causing him to jostle his fresh wound and re-opened the freshly made clots. It must have been painful, secretly to Kain's glee, but the pain didn't register on the young cops… disturbingly stunned face. Something about that last encounter had shaken him deeply, but Kain care what it was; the boys' deadweight was slowing him down, trying to drag the half-limp thing along, Kain really was beginning to wonder why he was bothering. The boy was acting like he was barely human, just a mass of human existence… and his delirious shock was really winding Kain up.

"Stand!" He snapped, shaking him violently like a child misbehaving himself. "Now is not the appropriate time to allow your emotions to cloud your judgement!" Kain was losing his patience with him… He'd managed to drag him a fair distance from the barricade, down an alleyway and around a bend into the filthy bowls of the city but just couldn't bear to haul the stupid idiot any further. His patience was wearing increasingly thing with every step and now his rage was dangerously exposed. He was ready to explode. The slightest upset would set him off, and one would not want to be in the firing path when Kain lost control to his rage…

Tossing the dumbfounded boy onto a pile of stinking trash in black plastic bags, he glared crossly down at him with his sharp golden eyes and shouted,

"Do you so enjoy pain?" He paused briefly, not looking for an answer, but letting his words sink in on that boy's thick skull. "You think that wound is the end? If you do not press on you will receive more of them, and I can promise you of that. I will see to it myself." That was a threat of violence if ever he did hear one… The young officer realised he might as well tell him. The more he kept his fears to himself, the more enraged and frustrated with him Kain got. He knew he was just as much in danger from Kain as he was any other monster running around in this city… but it wouldn't matter for much longer.

"I'm going to die…" The young officer said suddenly and frankly, abruptly capturing Kain's golden gaze with his own, frightened eyes.

Kain snorted and rolled his eyes agitated that this was the petty excuse for the boys' disruptive behaviour. Unfolding him arms, he made to snatch at the boy and haul him up again, but he slapped his hand away.

"You just don't get it, do you? You heard what it said! S.T.A.R.S it said! Oh God… Oh God I hoped it was a coincidence…."

"Are you going to let me in on this?" Kain said sarcastically.

"I... I'm friends with one of the S.T.A.R.S. He told me everything he knew about … about Umbrella and the zombies… I just listened, you know? But now that thing is coming after the S.T.A.R.S, and it wants to get rid of me first!"

"…So you know about all this…" Kain pondered. "But you can still escape the beast instead of excepting its wrath like a coward."

"No, no you see, you can 'escape its wrath'," He told him, his fevered concern forcing him to speak through the incredible pain of his injury. ", But it wont stop, wont rest, until it gets me…" He shook his head rapidly from side to side, as if he was refusing to acknowledge deaths' calling to him, sweat of terror running down his pale forehead and being flicked about him.

"So," Kain said softly, taking in his words. "You plan to let it kill you…"-

- "How long do you think I'll be able to survive here with his wound?" He pointed at his shredded, bloodied gash the creature had given him. Apparently, the tentacle that had emerged from one of its hands had scissored through the cloth of his uniform and flesh alike, grazing the bone cruelly. The boy felt the impending certainty of death sit uncomfortably in his gut and was thrown into the same sense of panic that William had been in shortly before his demise. The officers training was showing, he was taking it all very well considering he knew he was going to die. But his panic only showed in his face, in the sweat of his brow, in his shallow, rapid breaths… and in the defeated look he gave Kain when he offered to help him back up.

"There's no point." He said, so normally that it unnerved Kain somewhat… "It'll just keep chasing me. And you."

Kain shook his head, frowning in flabbergasted disbelief. "Unbelievable…" Once again, Kain was disturbed by the unsettling unpredictability of this world. It disgusted him; it left him feeling emotionally suffocated, appalled and speechless. The resignation of fate in the boys' eyes was painful. Kain shook his head gently to himself. The boy had a firm grasp of reality before that monster got to him… his feet firmly on the ground with all this, and not making wild accusations about the origins of these creatures like everybody else and just focused on survival. Now, he'd transformed into a being absorbed in melancholic self-pity, head hung and emanating a painful woe making him almost unbearable watch. Kain presumed the boy was all out of ideas to extend his lifespan, but that was no excuse for how he was behaving.

"Then we'll kill it." Kain said suddenly. "You don't have to die because it is the will of a mindless beast. If it gets the better of you then you're no more deserve the status of a sentient than it." Though Kain truly believed in what he was saying and believed there was no way the boy could argue, he could just tell the boy had other ideas. It was like all the fight in his body had been knocked out of him with that narrowly avoided blow. If it had hit him directly then he probably would even be dead…

The penny dropped and Kain realized that the boy was already dead, emotionally that was, and with no will to fight, then the boy was no more useful to him than a mindless rag-doll.

"Then you wish to stay…?" Kain asked, lowering his voice, the words stagnating in the ghostly air for a few moments…

"I don't know…" He muttered, clearly in a kind of emotional strangulation. His human instincts were screaming at him to survive, but the rational part was in no doubt about what would happen to him… It was late afternoon and he knew he might not even live to see nightfall…

-Suddenly, the young cop started to rummage about in his pocket with his good arm and pulled out a long golden chain with a beautiful golden disc attached to the end – a pendant – and held it in the air out in front of him.

"Take this."

Kain frowned in mid confusion. "Why?" It was of no use to him and the cop should have worked out that Kain thought in that way by now…

"…A friend of mine… a reporter gave it to me. Now for the past few weeks he's been acting… weird. He let on that he'd found out something big about the Raccoon forest disaster and all that, but… well… He was really excited about it but then shut up less than a week ago… He gave me this locket two days ago… he said he'd found it when 'investigating'. I figured it was something important because he never tells me when he goes 'investigating' because nine times out of ten he gets arrested he has to put up with being lectured by me about it… He said he found it in the sewers. The freak had been down there a lot recently ever since another cop called Neil Carlsen reported someone trying to blow the sewers passages up. I… didn't really know what he was talking about at first. It was all pretty much a jumble to anyone listening who doesn't know anything about the Raccoon forest disaster…"

"What did he tell you?" Kain asked, the boys tired confessions piquing at his interest.

"I… I wasn't listening to him as much as I should have…" He confessed. "His words were all over the place, like he was in a hurry…" -

- "When he gave it to you?" Kain butted in. the boy looked up at the sound of his almost urgent words. "Two days ago when he gave it to you?"

"Yeah…"

"William changed two days ago…" Kain thought. "The blood of the city dwellers began to sour two days ago. The reporter must have been aware of this…"

Kain took the locket from the injured cop and quickly hung it around his neck with one hand, not removing his astonished gaze from the crippled form of the cop boy.

"Did he mention a name?"

"Irons. Brian Irons. The chief of police. Him and some guy named William. I'm sorry; I wasn't listening to him properly… He hates Irons enough as it is… I thought … I just thought this was one of his usual rants, you know?"

Kain nodded sympathetically. His thoughts collecting, he now knew that the R.P.D was undoubtedly his next location. There, all his answer lay and right now, answers were his only hope of escaping this world plagued by humanity.

Looking down at the boy pitifully, he knew he should leave him to die before the creature regained its consciousness but found that he was unable to tear himself away. Kain couldn't understand what was wrong with him. The glassy, painful look in the boys' dark eyes, the tortured resignation that was all over his now deathly pail face. . . It was doing something to him. . .

"Why are you still here?" The boy asked, propping his good hand up on his knee for support enough to look at him.

"I-" Kain stuttered. His words left him, and the boy straightened up his sitting position. He frowned slightly, not a hostile demonstration, but more confused than anything. "I don't know why."

The boy shook his head. "You're worried about me, but"-

-"You're wrong." He growled suddenly, interrupting him. "I care not for the life of some mortal"-

"Mortal. . . There you go again with that talk. . . I don't care what you are right now, but whatever you are, you can't be as immortal as you'd like." Kain frowned, finding his dark blood boiling at the disgusting impudence of the boy. If it was his own mortality he wanted to prove, then-

-The boy suddenly drew his gun and pointed it directly at Kains' head. The cop didn't blink, didn't even seem to care about the recklessness of his action, but Kain cared. His problem was that he cared too much. The very second he lowered that weapon, he would kill that bastard. . .

"Well?" He smiled, pulling back the hammer on the deadly weapon. "Attack me. Come at me with everything you have."

Kain didn't move, only grimaced low and dangerously.

"You can't, can you? Because you know that the second you move, I'll blow your brains out." He was eerily well spoken for a boy close to death. He was filled with a kind of strength, induced as he realized this could be his last act as a living being. He stood, weapon unwavering from his forehead and paced slowly closer to him, burying the muzzle of the gun into Kains sleek, milky white cheek when he reached close proximity. If the cop had any previous doubt about Kain's nature before, at this close range he could see that the colour in his skin wasn't any kind of makeup. The stench of the blood that the cops' arm was covered in was driving Kain's senses crazy. The sharp, rich musk torturing him, his eyes glazed over like a mad animal and his mouth uncontrollably salivating. He swallowed hard to contain his excitement.

"You want to kill me, I can see it in your eyes, but you're not: why?" He waited a few moments, as if expecting Kain to answer. "Because I can blow your head clean off, cant I? If you're so immortal, then a bullet to the brain wouldn't do shit! You can die, Kain! You may not be as weak as normal people but you can still fucking die. If you fight stupid, those zombies will get you. It's not a question of how strong you are, or even what the hell you are, but if you don't realized your own fucking mortality. . . well then shit, man! This place is already full of bitter irony! You'll be asking for it!"

"I will NOT let those mindless creatures get the better of me, I promise you of that." Kain growled, anger seeping through his unwavering, marble-like exterior like beams white-hot sunlight piercing through dark heavy clouds.

"Yeah, well most of the people in this city probably thought they could beat those mindless zombie too, but now they're dead, Kain! They're all dead! And so will you be if you keep taking the piss like this!"

He took the gun away from Kains' face and he instinctively swatted the boy aside to the floor. He yelled out in pain as he struck the bottom dirty alleyway. Kain felt pleased; he deserved the pain for threatening him like that, but though he tried to ignore it, that part of him that had hurt when he tried to leave was now telling him that he was absolutely right. . .-

-After the young cop finished his pained wails, in the silence they could hear something. . . Something that clearly drove daggers of pure terror into the heart of the young cop.

It was footsteps, heavy, thumping, pounding, thunderous footsteps of the trench coat monster, the one that was in search of the S.T.A.R.S, the one that would ultimately kill the petrified young officer.

It rounded the corner nearest the boy, and Kain felt his black heart tingle with a multitude of emotions. Amongst them was excitement, hatred, anticipation, but most unusually there was fear; fear from the weaker part of him uncovered by the long stasis in William's lab. But unnervingly for Kain, the fear wasn't for him. . . it was for the crippled boy sprawled on the floor before the beast.

"Get away from it!" Called out Kain, unable to control himself. The boy was in danger and Kain couldn't shoot at it when the officer was in his line of fire. He moved across the floor, the monsters mutilated face stuck in a scowl down at him, and then clambered to his feet. "MOVE!" Kain let out a shout in much out of character concern, no doubt brought on by the weakness caused by the stasis.

The boy stumbled on his feet, the creature almost taking some kind of pleasure in its' preys defencelessness and seemed to be watching him writhe.

"My nemesis. . ." The officer muttered gravely under his breath, before again taking out his weapon. "Run, guy!" He called back to Kain. "Move it!"

Kain's eyes widened when he realized what that boy was planning to do. "Are you MAD?"

"GO!" The boy began to fire but the monster had watched long enough. The bullets pounding into its chest had no effect on it, and before the officer had a chance to run (if he was planning on running) its enormous thick hand was around his neck, lifting him high into the air. Kain drew his shotgun, but couldn't shoot. . . He would undoubtedly hit the boy. . .

The creature lifted his other strong hand as it slit open and a slimy purple tentacle protruded. The young officer was about to be subjected to the same fate as the dozens of corpses littering the barricade; to have his face decimated by that revolting appendage. . .

"Get. . . away. . ." He garbled. "You just make sure. . . you. . . get away!" Kain turned and moved. He moved fast, briskly walking, almost running into the labyrinth of back alleys as fast as he could go. He forced himself not to look back and felt the disgustingly weak part of him twist and burn inside at the sound of a loud scream abruptly stop with the sound of smashing bone and wet, ripping flesh.

Kain's weakened state was causing his judgement to become clouded with strange emotions he hadn't felt in decades and he didn't like it. He couldn't guarantee he would be able to defy the young officers predictions about his mortality, unknowing whether he was mentally strong enough to cope with this hell. . . He made his way to the R.P.D at a fast pace with an unsettling feeling in the bottom of his stomach, a feeling that he new would control him if he did not learn to master it himself. . .