Sherry Birkin had been hiding in the bowels of the RPD building for what felt like days, yet she had watched the sun go down on that fateful date barely an hour ago. The shadows of nightfall set in by far quicker in the winter months than they had in the summer and had devoured the daylight so gradually, yet so suddenly, that she hadn't noticed the changes until nearly twilight.

After the attacks had begun, everything was so confusing… People were running around all over the place in a disorganised muddle, and that creepy Police Chief Brian Irons was yelling out orders over it all like some sort of dictator. The cops were torn between following his orders and actually doing something to protect the civilians, but Sherry didn't see if any of them survived or not. She ran. She ran away as fast as she could before someone grabbed her by the arm and tried to take her to a safe place, and that would almost mean certain death, because everywhere the adults went was a place where the zombies could get.

Sherry had found her way into the ventilation system of the RPD shortly after the attacks. It was harder than it sounded to enter such a system, the sheer orgy of confusion and carnage made it almost impossible to tell a zombie from a person in a muddle crowd, until one had hold of you, then you certainly got to find out who was who. One factor that didn't help this was that in many terrible cases, the living people trying to escape were more mutilated than some of the zombies, torn flesh hanging from their face and body. Sherry had seen this on many occasions and on every time she felt something inside her change and twist, teetering on the edge of total breakdown. She tried her hardest not to look at them as she ran as fast as she could, but she could seen them out of the corner of her eye, clawing at the floor trying to escape from the undead monsters calling to her for help, but every time they did she knew she couldn't help them, that it would be dangerous for her to try and help them, and it tore her to pieces to walk on by and all the will she could muster to continue running. She had entered the building through the parking lot; the shutters now closed and cut off from the rest of the street making it impossible for anyone to enter that way now. If one ended up in the small courtyard before the parking lot, then one would have to enter the building through the stairs to the helipad, but now, Sherry doubted very much that anyone could get in that way either.

She had been asleep in the ventilation system when the very earth shook her awake. Something had exploded somewhere in the RPD very close to her, and when she crawled through the ducts to put distance between her and the source of the noise, she felt her heart skip a beat when she noticed the ducts were warming, becoming hotter and hotter the further she went. The roar of flames became apparent when she went as deep as she could take it, her palms now unable to take much more of the heat. Something had crashed into the second floor of the building and it had cut off from one of her main escape routes. The particular part of the vent system she was in required her to escape through the path that was now unreachable to her. Whatever crashed into the building in flames was heating this particular part of the vent system so that it would become unbearable to be in in a matter of time…

There was only one other way out that Sherry really didn't want to take: To travel through a vent to the first floor that was practically a vertical drop of four meters. If she slipped while climbing down then she would either be killed or break something. On top of that, the first floor was the most dangerous one. Zombies couldn't really be bothered to climb stairs all the much, and they tend to have a nasty habit of coming through windows, as Sherry had heard off in the distance many times, the smashing of glass followed instantly by screams and gunfire. There were more monsters on the level, more winding corridors and paths on which to get lost, and when travelling through the ducts just above the East office when she was still on the fist floor, she was chilled to see just how many of the undead stood in that room, unsteadily swaying from side to side, unable to keep in balance because of the extent of their decay, and waiting ominously patiently for a victim to fall in their web.

It chilled Sherry to the bone when she beheld zombies through grills when they were unaware of any prescience. They simply stood as if waiting. Sometimes they would shamble weakly towards a noise, like gunfire from somewhere in the distance, but the inhuman why they simply waited for someone to stumble across them was disturbing, occasionally wailing cold, almost lonely howls for time to time… It made her shiver at the sight of them and yet if she came across the sight of one through the vents, she couldn't help but stop for a second to look. She saw movement and it drove her to for just a second to look, to see what it was. When it was a zombie, she almost always felt like she had been speared in the heart, but what else did she expect to see? She had come to the conclusion that maybe a part of her was hoping that she would see someone alive, someone, anyone, even if she didn't want to go with them. She tried not to think that she might be the only person left alive in the building, because when she did, the thought occurred to her that maybe she could be the only person left alive in the whole entire city, which was impossible. It must have been impossible! But when she beheld the countless masses of cop-zombies, of RPD's elite, it seemed that civilians had even less of a chance of being able to handle the situation.

The only reason Sherry had survived this far was because her mother told her to come here. The way her mother sounded as she spoke on the phone… Her voice was shaky and breaking, like something terrible had happened down at the chemical plant... It terrified her so much that she cried for a good while afterwards… Sherry wasn't stupid. Her mother had called her to warn her about something and literally hours later all this started to happen… It just sickened Sherry to make the connection between her mother and father and what was happening now. She was in a state of denial, almost; refusing to believe that this had anything to do with the zombies, but part of her knew that there was an obvious connection. Her parents had told her that at the chemical plant, they made vaccines for hospitals and cures for diseases so there was defiantly some correlation, but her mother and father probably weren't responsible for what was going on… She felt with all her being just how much she didn't want them involved, and that they were probably still at the chemical plant, laying low and waiting for the army, but another, darker part of her said that was silly. They may even be dead already…

She had started to make her way to the RPD in the late morning, at about eleven or eleven thirty and stopped off at the park on the way. It was the same park that her parents often took her to when they got some time off work, which wasn't that often. It had swings and slides and everything, and its most beautiful feature was a large tree by one of the benches that boasted huge quantities of elegant pink blossom in the spring months. Most of it was gone by late summer, which was the current season, but that didn't stop Sherry from travelling through it and stopping briefly to climb on the jungle gym for a little while. Thinking back, it should have caught her attention that it was very empty for this time of day during the weekend, but she just figured she was very lucky, and what with all the business with the carnival that was being set up for later in the day that everyone was saving their money and energy for that.

She had just jumped down from the monkey bars when she noticed a man across the park in a clearing from all the slides and stuff in the middles of the playing field. At first she thought she was just a plain man sitting down enjoying the sun, but the more she looked at him, the more she realised there was something very wrong about him. He wasn't so much sitting, as slouching down on his knees like he was sick or in pain or something… She moved closer, worried that he might be a victim of assault or something similar but as she got closer she saw something terrible… His skin was hanging from his limbs and his eyes were all cataract, his body in an early state of decay. Seeing this, Sherry knew that this was what her mother was warning her about, and without another thought, she ran.

By this time it was later on in the day. Playing in the park and remembering the happy times she had spent with her mother and father had eaten up time surprisingly quickly, but she did not regret expending so much time, even if it did mean she was caught in the brunt of the zombie attacks briefly. It was the last positive experience she had felt today and she didn't whish it was any other way.

She had run into trouble of a kind she didn't expect as she fled for the safety of the police department. The carnival had begun by that time and pushing her way through crowds of rowdy, drunken adults was an unnerving experience that had slowed her escape attempts considerably. As she rushed through, she felt angry that adults could behave so ignorantly and irresponsibly and then preach to their children proper behaviour. She could not have possibly been the only person in the city to see a zombie so early on in the day. How could the cops have ignored such a threat?

She burst free into a clearing finally, but to her shock and terror she ran straight into another person, this one grabbing her forcefully and painfully by the arms and would not let go. Sherry remembered looking at that man… How he had terrified her just as much as the zombies. His eyes were yellow and his skin cold and pure white… he looked like a monster and behaved like one too. She felt that if he hadn't let her go then there was no way she would have the strength to struggle free from his grasp. Was he infected with the zombie poison? At this time, it only affected people whom had been killed by other zombies - something in their blood infecting their victims - but at one point it must have affected living people too…

Sliding down the vents was easy enough. She didn't slip like she had feared, and now came the hardest part; leaving the safety of this one-way vent to find the entrance to another.

She crept through the lower levels of the building, trying to make herself seem as small and as insignificant as possible, trying to make as little noise as she could. She didn't even want to make herself breathe too hard for fear that some undead creature could intercept on it. Right now, she had just exited the vent system by breaking through a metal mesh barrier and had emerged into a horrible narrow corridor, green in predominant colour and very blood stained around the windows which was no doubt connected with the broken boarded window. Fresh and dry blood wetted the splintered edges that circumference the broken glass of the windows, like teeth around the gaping blackness of a dark and sinister mouth. It was through these types of windows that zombies came. Worst of all was that it was almost impossible to see what was going on outside until the monsters were at the very window itself.

Sherry was in luck. This narrow, claustrophobic corridor ended just informant of Sherry at a door less than a meter in front of her, and scuttling free from the safety of the ventilation shaft, she clutch the large doorknob with her small hand. It was so big that it filled up most of her palm, and twisting it –

- The door was suddenly forced open by something trying to enter on the other side. Instinctively, Sherry pushed opposing the force, but it was too strong for her to hold for long.

Sherry's heart exploded into a fast beating panic when she heard the rioting floury of mindless moans on the other side of the wooden door; the moans of zombies. A revolting waft of putrid flesh came over her suddenly as one of the creatures managed to wedge its rotting hand between the door and the frame. Sherry made a decision then, and quickly thrust herself away from the door - not looking back – running past the ventilation shaft that lead only to a dead end and through the narrow, gloomy corridors. She could hear them behind her, chasing her yet she couldn't work out how far behind her they were - she was just too shit scared to think rationally.

Suddenly, she noticed a pair of double doors to her left and dashed into them as soon as her fingers pressed against the wood of the door. Her irrationally terrified mind didn't seem to be aware of the possibility that the door that she was now dashing for could be even more full of zombies than the corridor but batting it's swing doors open, Sherry dived in without a logical thought in her head and raced down the isle of the room, tripping on one of the chairs in the room and falling to the floor momentarily.

This was a conference room so some kind with a storeroom in the back; that is what Sherry's eyes fixated on the second she struck the cold tiled floor. She sprang back up as if the floor was made from a springboard, dashing for the door at full power. She was crying uncontrollably now, her forehead wet with sweat and her cheeks drenched with salty tears, Sherry didn't care anymore about what was ahead of her. All her senses were focused on the things behind her. She was utterly ignorant of how far, exactly. Terror had made everything a meaningless blur. Up and down didn't exist. Reality was no longer the important thing and lacked all substance, becoming like a dread one couldn't remember.

Sherry ran into the storeroom full pelt and pulled the door closed behind her. There was a lock on the insides, which Sherry pulled immediately across, bolting the door firmly and putting something solid and unbreakable between the creatures, but her hopes were beginning to sink again when she heard the zombies were still very close by… The double doors of the operation room where hinged and didn't require turning the knobs to open them. Those things could have just pressed against it to open them, and from the disturbing sounds of scraping chairs being knocked across the room, the monsters had found their way in.

Sherry removed her ear suddenly from the door when a low, soft thud could be heard from the other side. Her blood was now running cold. She was trapped in this pokey little storage room with no apparent means of escape. Zombies didn't give up and wander off. As she had observed before, zombies would just simply stand in wait when no one was around like mindless robots. If she tried to escape, they would most certainly get her, especially now that one of them was waiting right by the door to pounce… -

-But she heard a noise off to her left that made her heart skip a beat. A horrible squelching noise, like cold ripping guts or at least that's what it sounded like to her. Her eyes were wide and teary, she slowly turned to gaze upon the creature she shared her hiding place with.

Her deep blue eyes were instantly drawn to the intense colours of red blood and sticky black viscera on the chest of a woman crumpled between a suit of armour and a stack of lime coloured chairs. Blood was only just beginning to blossom onto the floor from a tremendous slash from her crotch to her throat, deeper into her body than Sherry's whole hand-span. Sherry clapped her hands over her mouth in disgust. The woman's whole torso was shredded completely open, her flesh peeled from her body like a banana. -

-And there was a man standing over her. Piecing together terrified fragments of images in her mind, Sherry saw its pale skin stained with blood first of all and so she instantly presumed a zombie, until it turned to face her. It had its yellow piercing eyes fixed fiercely and, turning to face her, she recognised it. It was the man from the street with the pale marble skin, the one who had terrified her so: His long white hair was unmistakable.

He watched her for a moment and she regarded him too, everything seeming surreal to her with the dizzy head rush of terror. Even the soft thudding on the door of the mindless undead creatures no longer mattered to her. She was trapped with this horrific thing with its black claws grasping the bloodied tee shirt of a horrifically mutilated young woman, thick fresh blood running from his dark lips, drips falling freely onto his partially bare chest like the driving rain. His red robes that had been covering most of his chest loosened somehow and Sherry jumped to the conclusion that it had been in a struggle.

Sherry was close to losing it, feeling her desperation peak. No matter how hard she wished for there to be something, she just didn't know what to do. She couldn't quiet herself, crying loudly now.

-Kain slowly realised he recognised her and dropped the corpse of the young woman to the floor with a heavy and damp thud. On closer inspection, he saw that she was William's daughter all right. She looked so much like him it was eerie in a way…

Kain smeared the blood from his mouth and mopped up the droplets on his chest with his shawl as the small girl huddled into a corner, crying to herself. She'd wedged herself behind a stack of chairs and a covered up painting in some attempt to hide herself from him. Kain nearly felt sorry for the terrified little girl. Had this been any other place… Kain pondered what he might have done had this been Nosgoth but came up with no answer.

Kain slowly moved closer to the crying child. "She begged me to kill her." Kain told her, and she looked up at him with watery eyes, stinging and red around the lids. "She knew she would die and what I was and asked for it."

"No!" Squealed the child in a high pitched and young diminutive little voice. Kain could see she was utterly terrified of him and couldn't seem to believe that anyone would really want death, not in that agonising way at least. "You ate her! You killed her!"

Kain wept some more of the blood from the corner of his dark lips, regarding it only briefly with an indifferent glance.

"Blood is required to feed my body, child." Kain said as softly and as unthreateningly as he could manage. Kain was fully aware that if delivered incorrectly, those words could strike terror into the heart of the small child rather than informer her of what he truly was.

"Zombies do that!" She blurted out in her high voice, still balled into a corner as tightly as she could.

"I'm not a zombie." He explained clearly and gently, something new to him, and came straight out with the truth; "I am a vampire. But notably somewhat different from the vampire legends of this world"-

- "You're crazy!" She interrupted. Kain's thick eyebrows furrowed. She was trying his patience and one would not be wise to do so. He marched forward and grabbed the small girl by the collar of her vest and lifted her up to his eye level. She screamed as she did so, causing the zombies on the other side of the storeroom door to come back to life and moan mindlessly.

"Listen, girl." Kain growled, his eyes meeting her terrified stare. "At my whim you can be saved or killed. You would be unwise to argue with me." And with that he dropped her to the floor. She landed on her feet and shrived back into the wall again, still weeping.

"Why are you doing this to me?" She whined, the desperation unmistakeable in her voice. "Why do you want to do to me what you did to that lady?"

"Did I say to you I want to hurt you?"

Sherry fell silent, only the occasional stuttering breaths coming from her now as she recovered from her tears, wiping her red eyes with the sleeves of her shirt.

"What are you going to do to me?"

Kain smiled.

Abruptly, Kain began to unbolt the door and Sherry flew into panic.

"What are you doing!" She wailed, then as the door flew open she darted further into the room, but not too far, as she stopped dead suddenly when she realised with each step she was coming closer t the body of the mutilated young woman.

The zombies came piling in, and then they began falling on the floor. It was all happening so incredibly fast… The zombies that were falling on the floor were torn to bloodied shreds! At some point during the brief period it took for the creatures to come into contact with that 'vampire' and the floor, they were being torn and shredded up into bloody pulp as if they had hit the blades or a rapidly swirling fan. Was he doing all this?

The last one fell onto the pile of mashed up corpses so tainted with minced flesh and innards that it was almost impossible to discern them as once human. The man's claws were dripping, oozing with mouldy blood. They could not be wetter if he had doused them in water. He removed his red shawl from his pale body and uncaringly dried his hands on it.

Sherry's heart was like ice. She was stranded, as there was no was she was going to wade through the large pile of minced human flesh and there was so much blood running on the floor that it was nearing Sherry's feet. She backed away unable to think clearly through all the fear, and almost stumbled on the corps of the young woman the evil man had killed a moment ago.

The man, still drying his hands callously, turned to face Sherry.

"I am Kain." He said blankly. "As you can see I am quite capable of taking care of myself and you, even when the likes of you humans are not."

Sherry was having less and less doubt in her mind that this weird man really was a vampire. If zombies and the inside-out men, as she called them, could exist then why not vampires? Maybe he was safer to be with than all the humans that had offered to protect her and had died shortly after; still screaming for her long after the zombies started tearing into their flesh. This evil, man may have appeared very strong, but would he last? Could she risk it? This was her life she was talking about. It wasn't about whether she trusted him or not, it was about whether she would die in his care.

Kain stepped over the pile of mutilated corpses not even looking to the ground as he did so. Sherry didn't back away this time, despite wanting to run and hide away more than anything else in the world. She wanted to show him she was not afraid, even though this evil man frightened her more than the zombies and the inside-out men put together. They were mindless hunters but he was an intelligent being. What must have been going through his head to make him do such things so coldly?

"My name's Sherry Birkin." She told him, trying to be brave, but it didn't sound in her voice. She didn't know what else to say, other than to ask him. "…Are you really a monster…?"

Kain paused. "I am." His voice was low and gruff but he didn't want to lie to her. Humans thought differently in this world, he was aware of that. He had to treat her differently from how he normally would to avoid complications.

"So… you're a vampire…?" She asked sheepishly, not wanting to meet his threatening eyes.

"Yes. But I am the only one of my kind in this world. I was brought here"- He paused. The next sentence could possibly contain the name of her father and the revelation that he was responsible for this nightmare but she was already in a state. She did not need to know such things, not now. "I was brought here by an unknown force. I know not of a way back to my world."

Sherry had fallen quiet. As she pondered this while holding back here tears, a thought slowly occurred to her, gradually cutting through the haze of fear and doubt like a ray of light slicing through the fog.

The monster! The monster that had been chasing her through the R.P.D for a whole day now! She'd forgotten all about it! If she stayed in a place outside the ventilation system for too long, then it would come. It was always hunting her down, forever wandering the police department in search of her blood.

Once, she was moving through a cold vent that travelled across the ceiling of a poorly lit and dingy basement room, she saw the horrific beast directly beneath her through a vent. It was suddenly there, causing her heart to shrivel and feel as though it was going to explode with shock and fright. It was just waiting; standing like the zombies, but Sherry could almost feel just what it was waiting for… it was waiting for her. Why? – She did not know… but her doubts were silenced, for everywhere she went, no matter what crevice of the R.P.D she crawled into, just when she though it was gone for good, she would hear it's mangled inhuman cry close by from some unknown depths in the R.P.D subbasement. That was why she stayed on the second floor so much. Not only were there fewer zombies, but also it was as far away as she could get from the great beast that stalked her.

The evil man – Kain, as he had called himself – could see her fly into a sudden panic. He wasn't sure what about by the looks of his puzzled expression, but didn't enquire into it, either.

"I can't come with you!" Sherry exclaimed abruptly. "There's this monster, bigger than any of the zombies and it's coming after me! I can't stay out of the vents too long or it'll find me!"

So that's how she survived this far… Kain pondered to himself. "This monster you speak of…" Kain continued, feeling a niggling suspicion inside him. "Did it have brown hair and one arm much larger than the other?"

Sherry's eyes lit up with a mix of fear and excitement. "You've seen it?"

"I've more than seen that thing." Kain said sarcastically with more than a little of it focused on the word 'that'.

"The creature took advantage of me in a weakened state and broke a few of my ribs."

Sherry's human eyes flickered to his still bare chest and back to meet his yellow stare again. Kain caught her making this movement and felt himself smile slightly.

"I healed."

Sherry's eyes widened. She didn't quite know how to respond to that, and as Kain waited for her to think up some kind or rational answer, he slipped his red cloth back onto his body, clipping it to place with the one or two strategically placed leather straps.

After he had finished, Kain moved closer to Sherry and quickly, before she could react, he wrapped hi strong claws around her midsection and lifted her up, over the piles of minced up zombies and back onto the floor next to the storeroom door. What happened next was something that Kain suspected she would do. She ran, trying to escape this strange and apparently evil man before he could do to her what he did to the zombies. Kain shifted to mist form and drifted right past her down the narrow isle of the operation room, before rematerialising directly in front of the running child. She barely avoided running into him and was frightened and startled by his abilities. She started to back off slowly again, but Kain spoke before she could attempt another escape.

"I know you are afraid of me and my capabilities, and I know you hesitate to accompany me for fear that you will end up like so many other adults you've seen perish at the hands of the mindless undead, but little human, know you not that I am far stronger than any of them, even in this weakened condition? I can assure you that I have fought and won again countless demons far stronger than the likes of these mortal made wretches. I am the single most dangerous creature in this building. Why do you not ally with me when you have the chance?"

"Because I don't want to turn into one of those bug-eating weirdoes in the Dracula movies!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"In the Dracula movies, the head vampire gets someone to do all his dirty work so all he has to do in the film is just bite people once or twice and the person who helps Dracula is usually some bug-eating freak!"

Kain chuckled sarcastically and shook his head. "You 'Raccoon City' humans have some very strange ideas about vampires indeed."-

-Sherry unexpectedly shoved past Kain and darted for the double doors of the operation room. Kain felt a twinge of anger and disappointment flair up in his dark heart before giving chase, but you young girl had taken him by surprise and was by now quite ahead of him. She was also running with apparently all her heart and soul poured into it, making it very difficult for even an inhumanly quick beast like Kain to catch up. The double doors swung back into his face and caused yet another full second of delay as he had to stop to bat them violently, and increasingly furiously, out of his way.

He emerged into the corridor just in time to hear the door to the second floor swing back and slam closed. He stopped chasing by then. By the time he ascended the stairs she would have already squeezed her way into the ventilation system. Kain continued to the stairs to the second floor at a far more relaxed pace. From his one or two previous visits to the R.P.D, he'd learnt from the questions he'd asked some officers, the S.T.A.R.S office was on the second floor.

Kain smiled: The S.T.A.R.S were as important to understanding these events as William Birkin, the keystone himself. He should give their office a good and firm examination. The Humans in this world apparently recognised the presidency of knowledge over power if a militant group such as the S.T.A.R.S even owned an office. The greatest flaw that knowledge had was that the wrong people could far more easily assimilate it than the power of others, provided they discover the right material. However, one can apparently know it all and still be felled (as William had demonstrated in the act of his death) if they lacked the power to back it up. William was weak, both emotionally and physically. Knowledge was apparently not powerful enough against brute force…

…But William's G-virus… the product of his mental fruits… of his knowledge… and now it had made him virtually unstoppable…

Kain grinned wide to himself. This proverb covered itself from contradiction quite neatly…