LOKRE2

by birkinsmith-88

Finally Finished it after all these years! A crossover between Legacy of Kain and Resident Evil, though I've tried to make it so that you need to prior knowlege of either of them... You decide if I've suceeded!

9. Part9: Sherry Mission 2

Sherry Birkin ejected the empty clip and reloaded the cool handgun Kain had given her with here frightened blue eyes fixated on the zombie dog that she had just killed with the deadly weapon. She still couldn't get over how Kain had trusted her enough to give her a gun: Her parents didn't think she was mature enough to get a pet Guinea Pig! The dead zombie dog on the floor was testament to how she was competent in self-defence and it was pretty neat finally having something to defend yourself with, turning from prey to predator with the addition of a weapon, but holding the gun out in front of her even with both hands was really difficult! It was like holding a brick! She barely managed to get the gun up in time as it lunged for her throat with its teeth, disgustingly oozing with unnatural quantities of saliva. The thing had basically been just like the human zombies; bits of skin missing, eyes cataract, but it had ran around and howled like a hyperactive, overly viscous hound, rather than the slow, deadly plodding of the human zombies. She'd never seen or heard of zombie dogs in the movies before, but wondered why. They were every bit as terrifying as the zombies only hundreds of times more lethal with their speed and ferocity.

The only place she'd ever heard of zombies was when her father William Birkin took her to an old B-Movie cinema in the rundown outskirts of Raccoon city. Her mother was very protective of her and had it not been for her father, then she may never have even gotten out into the outside world to even play! Every Saturday, her father got some time off to be with his family. She barely saw him the rest of the week, but every Saturday he would take her out to the cinema to see a film. Trying to predict what movie you would be seeing was like trying to find a needle in a hay factory. He'd take her to see movies with an adult rating but when someone tried to say she couldn't go in, he'd start ranting and raving about how she was an adult with dwarfism and how it was disgusting that they be so prejudice. It was blatantly obvious that she was a 12 year old girl and he was lying through his teeth but he kicked up such a fuss that they'd just end up letting them in to shut him up. It had even happened more than once where they went to see a movie with an innocent title that turned out to be something completely obscure, like a porno or something, and her father would absolutely insist upon watching it because it just wouldn't be Saturday if they didn't. She got the feeling her fathers' intentions were somewhat different from that, however.

He took her to see the odd zombie movie, which scared the crap out of her, but once you saw one zombie on the big screen, you've seen them all and she rapidly got bored of the genre. The Racoon zombies were much different however, more rotting flesh and gore visible than discoloured flesh. They were far more horrific and disfigured. Her father often laughed at the zombies in the movies, yelling out comments like 'come on - that's bullshit' or 'yeah right, like a zombie could do something like that' as though he was an expert on the topic or something. This pissed off a lot of the people in the cinema but it made her feel reassured, brining her back down to earth and stopping her from getting too absorbed and terrified by the movie.

Her fondest memory of a zombie movie was when her father asked for her chewing gum that she'd been chewing, stuck it in the end of a drinks straw, turned around in his chair, and fired it off at the camera at the back of the cinema. He scored a direct his and the second it struck, there was this huge shadow covering the entire screen that was the blob of chewing gum that was stuck over most of the lens camera lens. A huge roar of discontent rose from the crowd of people in the cinema and the movie had to be stopped for maintenance. She couldn't remember any other time when she'd laughed so hard…

She remembered why she was still searching for her father even though she knew he probably wasn't here anymore; She wanted to see him smile at her and joke with her to set her at ease again. Everyone else she'd met was so serious about their situation… It made her so nervous, so terrified… Her Dad wouldn't pretend their situation was good, but he wouldn't unnecessarily put the fear of God into her, either.

She'd been only in one duct since Kain left, and that was almost on the roof of the chamber. It'd been murder, crawling up the wall to get there, but somehow, using the corner or the room, she'd managed. She was now in another area of a sewer system… some steps leading down into a murky narrow alleyway with slimily green stone walls and the floor coated in a few inches of dark, dirty water. She wasn't going in there, that's for sure. When she fell into the disgusting semi-treated water in the room with the boxes, she didn't stop gagging for a whole minuet. It was ironic; the reek of zombies was far, far worse, but dip her in a little dirty water and she freaks out. She was frightened she might vomit if she went down there.

Of the other two doors, it was obvious the one she had to go through, as one on the wall opposite her and just to the left read 'storeroom' above it. The only way she could go was in the door on her right, which was open slightly ajar. Sherry readied the heavy handgun, just in case something jumped out on her (the feel of a good solid firearm in her hand really boosted her confidence: Before, she would have been terrified by her current predicament, but now it had simmered down to only constant burn of adrenalin in the pit of her stomach) and a quick sniff of the air made her realise the area didn't reek of the same level of decay the R.P.D did. Sherry guessed this must have meant no zombies… or a zombie that wasn't that far gone…

Well standing around here wasn't going to answer any questions she had. Opening the door wider with the muzzle of her gun, Sherry realised that she could infact smell something coming from the room. It was a strange, feral, musky scent so alien compared to the decay of the zombies that she hadn't noticed it's faint odour in the air, but entering into the dark, sideways 'H' room, the smell became far more pungent almost suffocating the air itself. What made that kind of dark animal smell? Speaking of dark, the lights on the ceiling were either broken or switched off, so Sherry couldn't see very far into the think blackness of the room, only stiff, metallic outlines of light from the open door reflecting on machinery surrounding the 'H' shaped walkway. -

-One of the objects off which light was being partially reflected moved, a shadowy lump heaving itself up, like the motions of something organic… Sherry immediately pointed the handgun at it, but after several seconds of scared, shaky aiming at the sickeningly large moving mass in the blackness, she had to drop it down again. It was just too heavy for her to hold up for too long. It really put in perspective just how much stronger adults must have been compared to her.

Parts of the creature freed itself from the murky shadows and Sherry's heart froze in icy terror. A fleshy claw, twice the size of a human head, gripped at the steal walkway separating her from it, the sharp bloodied tips of its claw like fingers grinding into the steel and stripping it off like bark from a tree. It wasn't a zombie and it was too big to be one of those tongue-licking inside out men. Sherry didn't want to know what it was… Sherry didn't want to run from it either because it was quite possibly blocking the exit from this accursed building.

As it's inhuman, vomiting head protruded on, the acidy green lumps struggling and growing legs, screeching through their thin layer of slime…-

-Sherry had waited long enough. She opened fire, the bullets exploding into the body of the parent and blowing holes into its grotesque yet somehow elegantly constructed form, only to see the flesh she destroyed begin to recover almost as soon as the shots finished, new flesh eating over the damaged section and forming a hard callous. What's worse was that the wriggling lumps in its vomit that she had neglected now scurried across the steel floor in a terrible wet scratching, scuttling towards her like a sick slime covered mutant crustacean. She didn't have enough shots left in the weapon Kain gave her to destroy it and its mutant offspring… She fired again, this time at the offspring coated in thick discoloured gunge scuttling towards her, holding the weapon as firmly as she could in her tiring arms but she couldn't brace the heavy weapon effectively and it bucked free from her hands, narrowly missing her head and flying to the floor behind her. She shrieked in panic, the scuttling spawn and massive sluggish parent were closing in and now she had been rendered weapon-less, like she had been stripped of a great emotional shield and devolved back into the scared, incapable little girl she didn't want to be anymore.

She jumped back to the small black gun resting with its slide open on the floor, fumbled nervously at it, starting to cry now, and rummaged in her hip pack for a clip, finding her fingers couldn't work with the shapes in the back and dropping the clips as soon as her fingers found their shape. Turning back only briefly, she screamed when she saw the parent was nearly halfway down the walkway towards her, its spawn still searching for her-

-One picked up on her location by her shout and unexpectedly launched itself at her face, the wet heavy lump of its body landing on her shoulder, clawing at the fabric for a footing and tearing open the cloth there. In a mindless attempt to rid herself of the undeveloped monster that struggled to force itself down her throat, she dropped the handgun and clutched at it with both hands, forcing it away but finding it too strong for her arms weakened by holding the heavy mass of the handgun. It was too strong. It was going to beat her. And as its siblings and parent closed in on her, her mindless, delirious fear began to seep away into something pure and chilling; the acceptance of death. It wasn't comfortable or peaceful, infact it was worse than the pure terror of knowing she was going to die. There was nothing, NOTHING she could dothat would be able to save her now. -

- But a hand, a hand in a fingerless glove grabbed at the powerful scuttling creature and threw it from her with a loud yell. Claire wore exactly the same kind of fingerless gloves, but the voice that yelled was male. Thundering shots rang out next to her and one by one the slime soaked offspring exploded into a small burst of gunk. As the man reloaded, Sherry clutched at her handgun once more and successfully reloaded herself, stopping for a moment to look at her rescuer. He was defiantly a man, fairly young she guessed, and an R.P.D officer. He was very handsome too, pale, flawless skin and sparkling blue eyes… It was like something out of a fairy story to be saved from a terrible monster by a handsome prince and to think that such a wonderful rescuer awaited her caused her to blush. He was clearly terrified, but powerful and courageous enough not to let it rule him. He looked at her briefly and she turned abruptly away, finding her blushing accompanied by a hot yet pleasurable burning inside her stomach.

-"Sherry!"-

-A voice she recognised as Kain's sounded out from somewhere not too far outside the door and the feelings of what she recognised as a crush unexpectedly turned to shame and guilt. As Kain accompanied by an Asian woman in a red dress and leggings rounded the door and came to her, Sherry found herself unable to figure out why she had suddenly felt so ashamed at finding this young officer so cute…

The woman in red join in with the officers gunfire on the heavy, large monster that flinched briefly in its stalking towards them, the wounds on its body still healing over as soon as the bullet had hit. They both reloaded, and realising they would need all the help they could get, Sherry join in too, emptying clips at it as fast as she could. The two human adults at first appeared startled by her contribution, but ignored it for now and continued firing-

-Right up until a series of thunderous, rapidly firing shots boomed out from Kain that they had not been expecting also. They were all shocked to see that he had picked up a sub-machine gun from somewhere (she guessed it must have been the weapons storage room, which she couldn't get into because of the thick steel door barring her way) and the rapid fire of the weapon didn't allow for enough time for the callous to grown over the wound before it was shredded open again. Now, a racing hot bullet tore open skin followed by its brothers tearing into the wound it left behind continuously. The monster screamed a phlegmy roar, rearing its body up with its beady, reddish eyes rolling in its sockets before falling with a deep thump to the steel floor. Kain released the trigger and an ominous plume of smoke left the muzzle of the weapon. Kain didn't smile in satisfaction as she figured we would: his eyes simply watched the still moving mass on the walkway for any sign of an attack. The thing seemed to be liquefying itself, its hard flesh turning to a kind of jelly, which then dripped over the sides of the platform, its bone claws breaking to dust and becoming absorbed into the liquid that was its insides. It was of little threat to them now, and Kain was the first to speak after their battle.

"Are you hurt?" Kain enquired, and Sherry looked over the torn cloth on her shoulder.

"It didn't cut any skin, I think…" She was still very shaken up from her near death experience and sometimes when she travelled through the air ducts in the R.P.D, her fear would block out any pain of a scraped knee or a cut finger until she saw it with her own eyes and became aware of its existence. "But I'm running low on ammunition." She said, checking around in her hip-pack, counting only two magazines left. "If you found anything while I was gone I'd"-

-"You gave her a gun?" Asked the angry officer, getting up from his crouch beside Sherry and turning to Kain.

"I did." Kain responded calmly, showing no emotion on his pale face. His demeanour angered the officer further and Sherry felt herself smile a little at Kain.

"How can you be so irresponsible?" Barked the cop. "She's just a kid!"

-"And if I sent her UNARMED into the very jaws of the dangers of this night, that would make me perfectly responsible?" Kain snarled, greatly irritated by what he saw as the boys insolence and narrow mindedness.

"You should have gone with her." The woman said coolly.

"She's a child, not a lobotomy patient." He said sarcastically, standing face to face with the woman, but as she was quite shorter than him, he had to tilt his head down to talk to her, enforcing Kain's idea that she was below him and shouldn't argue wit his word. "When armed she it perfectly capable as any one of you. Twelve years is long enough to learn to shoot at a zombie."

"That's not the point!" Yelled the young cop, coming to the woman's defence.

"And just what is your point? That she is somehow incapable of surviving as well as you?" Kain growled, shoving past the woman to confront the boy and grabbing Sherry violently by the arm. She didn't contest; she wanted to see how this turned out. "You are the only officer left alive in this building." Kain continued. "She has survived where they have fallen. That is my reason for trusting her abilities."

Sherry felt a glow of pride inside not unlike the heat of a crush she felt on first seeing the officer. This powerful vampire had faith in her…! She'd never felt so proud in all her life!

"If we hadn't come in here when we did then she would be dead!" The officer yelled in Kain's face. Kain appeared to be holding back an explosion of rage, but he wasn't hiding it very well.

"If it were you or your woman in the same situation then you too would be face with death!" He yelled back into the officers' face. "Do not slander her by condemning her where you too would fail."

"You have no idea do you?" The officer barked. "You can't just go around giving kids guns just because they know how to pull a trigger! It's reckless and stupid!"

While the young yet authoritive (or at least, he was trying his darndest to be) officer continued ranting on about things Kain had already argued his point against, he squeezed Sherry's arm firmly in trying to attract her attention. She looked up at him, his eyes still trained on the young officer and his fully-fledged solo argument, but his concentration on the small girl looking up as him. He let go of her arm, and looking down at her only for a second, he muttered to her;

"There's a vent in the Storeroom." And a smirk danced across his black lips only for a second. Sherry suddenly took in what he had just told her to do, and not stopping to nod or say thank you for all that he had said and done in her defence, she ran out the door as fast as she could. The young officer finally stopped in her argument, yelling something after her like 'hey' and following her, but when she entered the storeroom and saw to her delight an air duct hidden behind a large storage chest, she knew the officer had probably stopped following her already; he didn't know which path she could have travelled down. This vent was new to her; it could lead anywhere. Silently, she thanked Kain and made her way back into the bowels of the R.P.D

Needless to say, Leon Kennedy was mildly pissed at Kain for allowing a child to roam free in the perilous precinct and now had all the more reason to hate him for allowing the girl to escape back into it with low ammo. Kain surprised a small, satisfied smile as Leon burst into rage;

"Why weren't you holding her properly! Now she's back in there with no one to protect her!"

"I do not believe she is in need of our protection at this moment in time."

"I don't give a shit what you think about her abilities! She's twelve! She doesn't disserve to have her innocence robbed like this!"

"It is too late for you or anyone to protect her 'fragile mind' from the horrors of what has come to pass on this night." Kain snarled, glowering down at the officer, feeling his temper reach fever pitch. It MUST have shown on his face and yet the cop didn't relent!

"Don't you get what I'm saying?" Leon practically screamed into his face. Leon may not have been able to see how carried away he was getting, but Ada could, now becoming uncomfortable and telling Leon to calm down, only to be talked over by him completely. "You're an incompetent ass to let some kid run around in here! Don't you get that!"-

-Kain brought the back of his hand viciously across the fair cops face in a brutal slap that knocked him to the ground in a heavy, forced thud. He young man had been knocked stupid for a moment, and Ada, in her shock and anger, reached for her weapon, but relented when she saw Kain was more than prepared to snatch it from her the very moment her hands took hold of it. Whatever training she had undergone for such expert control of her temper was reflected in her lack of haste to attack Kain. Kain fixed his threatening yellow glare on her dark satin eyes as the officer groaned in pain, getting up to a slouch and rubbing a hand on his very painful jaw.-

-To find it come away with blood running down the black leather gloves. He traced claw like scratches across his right cheek in angry shock and rubbing his blood between his fingers he glared, infuriated beyond anything he had ever before felt at Kain.

"If only this were Nosgoth." Kain sneered, his voice coarse with rage. "If only it were so simple that I could snap your thin neck with my bare hands and revel as I take your blood into my body. And yet I stay my hand in this world because you are a survivor…" Kain strode up to the boy snagging his neck in his balled fist and pulling him up to his feet. The incompliant mortal did try to resist, but Kain was simply far too strong for the young man to even mark him. Kain licked the blood deliberately slowly from his cheek with his unnaturally soft tongue and heard Leon hold his breath for just a moment in sheer disgust and horror. Kain mouth looks similar to some canines, black gums with patches of pink and greyish salmon flesh here and there… What caught Leon by surprise was the feel of his breath on his skin. Every vampire (as he certainly appeared to be; if zombies could exist then why not vampires?) story he had ever heard of told him that they could not breathe, being undead and therefore breath unnecessary to them, but the hot flow of air on his tender bruising skin told him that vampires were infact closer to living creatures than any of the old stories had portrayed them to be. It figured… In ancient times, humans used to murder druids with knowledge of herbal remedies because they believed they were witches dealing with black magic. Herbal remedies would certainly seem like magic to someone brainwashed by a society deeming only those born into power were capable of intelligence. Humans demonised all forces of untamed power that they feared; wolves, witches and now vampires… If Kain hadn't been so a cruel to him, Leon may even have worked to understand him more.

Kain tossed him free of his grasp and the young officer stumbled backwards, rubbing the thin layer of saliva from his cut cheek.

"You are sailing very close to the line, my boy." Kain warned, his eyes now infused with a savage animal rage induced by the flavour of human blood. Kain had not taken a meal in quite a while: He was growing hungrier by the minuet… "You have no idea the desire I feel for you blood…" –

- Ada unexpectedly moved to subdue with him and was knocked back into the wall before she could even see the aggressive movement of his fists.

"Leave her alone!" Yelled Leon, rushing forward not to attack Kain by to help Ada up from her slumped heap on the floor. Kain tolerate Leons' actions wordlessly for a moment. Propping his white, clawed hand on his side, Kain then fumbled at the objects in his hip pack, his claws scratching again something made of stone…-

-Kain recalled what he was going to do before he saved William Birkin from oblivion.

"I am going back to the main R.P.D building to test my new key and to find a place where these stones work." Kain stated rather than asked. This time, they didn't contend with his views. "I see that at the opposite end of the room is a thick steel door leading out of this area with all the correct chess piece- shaped plugs intact. You can escape through there if you wish, or you could choose to sweep the building once more."

"There's no one left in there." Leon said, somewhat threateningly but nowhere near as demanding as before.

"Not even Claire Redfield?" Kain asked, and was pleased to see Leons' bright blue eyes light up in recognition. "You believed she was dead, didn't you? Please, let me guess: You said that you and she should separate to cover more ground, after arming her, of course."

"What I did with Claire is entire different from what you did to that kid you called Sherry!"

"Claire cannot be more than eight years older than the child. I suspect there may be even more years between you and Ada."

"This is different! She's a child!"

"Let's not go through this once more." Kain said with a sarcastic and weary tone of voice and pushing past the two he had put the fear of God into. "The fact of the matter is that you too have dumped a young woman alone in that building and so arguing with me to go with you despite this fact would be giving her a death sentence."

Leon scowled, but didn't argue. He felt he had had enough of Kain for now and could live with any mysterious disappearance he had planned for himself.

"I bid you goodnight." Kain said in parting with them. It was a good thing to go out on if he did not see them again, and knowing Raccoon City, he probably wouldn't. He had some more faith in Claire though. He had already witnessed her in two very distant locations of the R.P.D building and so it meant she was very capable of looking after herself in this nightmare despite her obvious youth. Kain simply didn't know what these stones would have in store from him once he found where they were suppose to be set so simply chose to expect nothing and that way he would not be surprised no matter what he encountered.

Sherry Birkin sat on the hard polished desk in what must have been that scary Chief Irons' office gently kicking her feet back and forth and waiting for someone to show up. On the way coming here, Sherry had ran into two inside out monsters and a few zombies, causing her to use up her last two clips. She had been pretty close to a vent at the time and so travel through there until she reached the relative safety of Irons' office. The desk smelt strange, like it had been very recently polished, the artificial scent stinging her nostrils slightly, still so very strong in the air was it. What puzzled her was why someone would polish a desk so thoroughly at a time like this. At least it told her that Irons must be close by; if he cared about the albeit creepy room to maintain it so well then it was likely he would come back to it some time soon… Granted, she was terrified of what Irons was like to be responsible for the disappearance of that unfortunate Sectary, she had no ammo and at least needed to ask him for some if he turned up. She searched the room over once and once was more than enough. Probing around mahogany display cabinets full of stuffed animals was creepy enough the first time around. Sometimes as she looked around them for items with her stare fixated warily on the glass eyes, she was even scared that they would come back to life just like one of the zombies and attack her. Yes, she was quite happy on the desk like this, facing the only two doors that entered and exited the room. The one of the wall opposite leaded into the corridor of the main building. The one on the right wall lead to the corridor that then lead to the storage room where she had first met Claire Redfield. The monster that had been stalking her couldn't have been around here anymore; the thing Kain put down in the basement looked so much like it in design that it could only have been some kind of offspring of the monster itself. It was probably down there now, looking for more victims to infect…

There was a click of the opposite door and Sherry jumped up off of the desk, knowing she was cornered by whatever came in to meet her but now after all she had been through, not really caring if it was human or zombie. She had been greatly desensitised by that one near death encounter and though she was no longer terrified and worried as she used to be, she still felt the strange sting of adrenaline in the pit of her stomach. Without the fear… it … well… it felt kinda good…

Sherry's face lit up with a smile when she recognised the one who entered as Claire, her face cautious and wary but breaking into a smile at the sound of her voice.

"Claire!"

"There you are sweetie!" She smiled, closing the door softly and lowering the handgun to her side. "I was worried about you."

"It's good to have you back, Claire." She smiled, then began her pitch: "Uh…" She was unsure whether to ask her for the ammo she needed, finding her hand grope around the back of her neck nervously. Was it her imagination or had it just gotten suddenly very warm in this room? That cute cop didn't like the idea of her using a gun and he was a man! Kind, mothering Claire sure as hell wouldn't like it one bit.

"What it is sweetie?" Claire asked, moving through the room to her. "Don't be shy. You know you can tell me anything."

Sherry braced herself and pasted on an apologetic look. "I ran out of bullets for my gun… If you have any clips spare… I'd be glad to take them off you… please?"

Claire frowned, turning serious. "Sweetheart, where you get a gun from? Those things are dangerous!"

"I know Claire!" Sherry protested. "And if they're so damn dangerous then why has it been the only thing stopping me from dying?" Sherry didn't let any weakness show on her face. Claire may have wanted to protect her but she had to understand that if she weren't around, the gun would protect her instead. The cop was a cop, after all. All he could see was the illegal use of a firearm by an underage kid. His training meant that he didn't understand that on a night like this, such cultural taboos had a value of jack-shit. If it weren't for the gun Kain had given her, she'd be dead by now! Who cares if she's too young to use it; it's doing the job it's meant for!

Claire kept her warm and unthreatening smile, but her eyes were laced with an unsure worry. "You're probably right, sweetheart, but what if you shot a person by accident?"

"It's the same for you, Claire!" Sherry protested, balling her hands into fists. "What if you shot that cop by accident?"

" 'Cop'?" Claire asked. "Then that must mean you've met Leon?"

"So that's his name?" Sherry blushed at just how exotic a name that such an attractive young man had but then shook her head to herself in a disappointed apprehension. If a cute girl like Claire new a handsome cop like Leon, then that probably meant… "Is he your… boyfriend?"

Claire looked shocked, yet in an amused way, spluttering into a chuckling laughter. "Oh! Uh, No honey! We've only just met on this night! He saved me from the zombies when I ran into town."

Sherry sighed wistfully at the thought of it. "Oh, he saved you too huh? What was it like?"

Claire laughed. "This really isn't the time or the place to be discussing boys Sherry. Besides, he's way too old for you."

Sherry hung her head, still smiling but a pouting a little. "You're probably right Claire…" But while she was here, she may as well asked the mature woman more about matters of the heart. "Claire, when I first saw Leon I felt really guilty at having a crush on him and I don't get why…"

Claire frowned, just as perplexed as she was. "I don't get why either, sweetheart…I could understand why if you already had a boyfriend…"-

-The door clicked open again and Claire jumped around, breaking off the girly chat with Sherry and preparing her handgun. As a last thought, she tossed a clip to Sherry, who caught it barely in both hands. Claire flashed a smile at her briefly, and then turned her attention back on the opening door.

"Chief?" Claire asked cautiously, referring to Chief Iron who owned this office. The door swung open and to Sherry's shock and delight, the figure that walked in filled her with the same sense of guilt she had experienced when she eyed up officer Leon.

It was Kain. Kain was what was making her feel guilty about being attracted to Leon. She had crushes on men before… She knows what one feels like. Why was she so guilty if she didn't feel the same for Kain?

Kain's prescience always took you by surprise when you talked to him around other human beings to compare him too. It wasn't until she saw him and Claire in the same room that she realised just how ashen his skin was. It was as white as pure driven snow; beautiful yet disturbingly inhuman. Even the zombies themselves had more colour in their cheeks but she figured that was the discolouration caused by decomposition… Claire's skin was also very pale in parts that usually remained fully clothe, like when her figure hugging black sleeves rolled up under her sink denim, the flesh there was very deathly pale indeed but Kain white hued body was terrifyingly colourless. Also, she had had the pleasure to receive a firm hug by both Claire and Kain. Kain's body was a solid as a rock all over whereas Claire's' skin was plush to the touch. Most humans, even the physically fix ones, were very soft where their muscles were involved. Kain was so impossibly rigid all over that she seriously wondered if striking a chair across his back would hurt him much at all. The analogy of marble wasn't far off from his physical appearance. Pure marble was a beautiful and unblemished crystal-like white and as tough as solid rock, but it was eroded by certain kinds of acid rain. Sherry smiled: She remembered how Kain told her water burnt him too. His body was as perfect as a carved marble statue, and he stood as proud as one too. A statue doesn't have such piercing, savage eyes, though…

"Claire Redfield and Sherry Birkin…" He said, as if he had some kind of strange ulterior motive going on that they had yet to learn. "You will be please to find that I have investigated all rooms but this one in the Police department."

"Why- What does that mean?" Claire asked, taking cautiously hold of Sherry's hand. Sherry didn't like this grip much; she was protecting her were she didn't need protection and she didn't like it.

"It means," Continued Kain, striding in heavy powerful steps around the low coffee table towards them. Claire backed away and tried to take Sherry with her, but she wriggled free from her grasp and gave her a mildly angry look. Sherry knew to trust Kain even if he was the most suspicious character here. At least for now… "That the great puzzle of the R.P.D is solved somewhere in this room."

"What puzzle?" Sherry asked, and Kain smirked, apparently appreciated that Sherry taking an active role in Kain's reasoning.

"This one." He took from his hip pack four stones: One yellow, one Red and two blue which appeared to be half of each other and laid them on the polished Chief's desk Sherry had been sitting on when alone in the room. The pictures on them were strange… the style reminded Sherry of some of the ancient tribes of what was now Mexico: Incas and Aztecs and all that… The 2D stylised drawings of what looked like a serpent on the red stone, an eagle on the yellow stone, and when the two halves of the blue stone were put together, they showed a wild cat that looked like a jaguar… "Now all I need to do if find a place to insert them."

Claire considered an insulting jest at this point, but decided that she didn't need that kind of trouble right now.

"And it's gotta be somewhere in here?" Asked Sherry, gazing excitedly up at Kain with alert and responsive little blue eyes. Kain nodded, and the second he did so, Sherry dashed away from the desk, shoved past Claire and ran up to a strange abstract painting behind the desk and chair. The painting was just above her reach so she had to kneel in the expensive looking leather swivel-chair positions on the opposite side of the desk from Kain. Sherry tapped a small red button next to it and the painting slid to one side to reveal three square holes each exactly the same shape as the three stones Kain had found throughout the R.P.D.

"I found this when I was looking through the room for some bullets for my gun." Sherry explained with a proud smile. "I was scared that if Chief Irons found me in here with this to one side, he'd kill me like he did his Sectary so I slid it back."

"Very good." Muttered Kain, acknowledging her success but being very lenient with his compliments. Sherry wasn't offended. She could tell he did it without even thinking.

Kain picked up two of the three stones, one in each hand, and Claire grabbed the two halves of the third. The pattern on the hole was diagonal across the display, one in the sky, one on the very base of what appeared to be the earth, and one at the very bottom.

"Place the Jaguar stone at the bottom." He instructed her. Kain placed the Eagle stone in the very top slot that was aerial in the picture. That much made sense.

"How do you know to put the others in this order?" Asked Claire as she put the two halves in place.

"I don't." Replied Kain. "But if they are in the wrong order, we need only switch them over." It made sense, and as Kain slot the final stone into position, Sherry heard the click of a trigger mechanism. Kain and Claire jumped back slightly at the sudden movement of the blank wall right next to the puzzle. It shook slightly, then slid itself out of their way with a stone grinding sound filling the office to reveal a hidden passage concealed behind it. Claires' fair face looked surprised but Kain's was ever a blank and defiant mask of power. He even seemed to be expecting as much.

"So… do we go in?" Asked Sherry. She was now a little scared by their unwillingness to explore further. She expected them to go right in but they just stood staring at this secret corridor as though they had received a death sentence. "I mean… this could be the only safe way out of here…"

"I'm not sure we should go in there, sweetie." Claire told her, not relenting in her soft tones even infront of the dangerous vampire. Strangely enough, Kain seemed rather irritated at Claires' attempt to talk to Sherry in a kind and warm manner. "It could be very dangerous if we go inside without knowing what's in there."

"What you mean to say's that you don't think I can handle any of it cos I'm a kid!"

"Sweetheart"-

-"Sherry," Interrupted Kain, taking the wheel and ultimately pissing Claire off. "Do you believe that you could defeat the spawn in the sewers with just your handgun? That creature burst forth from the chest of a live and conscious man. His death was incredibly painful and if one of those scurrying sawn reached your mouth it would have done the same to you."

"Kain!" Yelled Claire, tremendously disgusted at Kains' blasé attitude to carnage, especially in front of the child. "What are you trying to do to her?" Claires' maternal strategy was loving and compassionate. Kains' was utterly the opposite, a stark and cold declaration of the bitter facts and no attempt to act with an ounce of empathy in front of the child. What he said could have terribly screwed her up had it been on any other night than this. Or so Claire believed.

"…Kains' probably right…" Admitted Sherry reluctantly. "We'd probably be a burden."

"'We'd'?"

"Do you suppose I intend to take an equally as useless female with me? You are both armed with identical weapons so you are both as much a danger to yourselves and myself as the other. I, however, still have at least 50 ammunition left on my submachine gun. I am fully capable of taking care of myself and do not need a female to guard my back, whether she be of twelve or twenty years."

"You wont survive alone! You HAVE to take me with you!" Demanded Claire angrily. She was deeply offended to be classed at the same skill level as Sherry.

"And leave Sherry all lone? Are you that hysterical, woman? Like it or not, if it is unsafe for Sherry then it will be unsafe for you." He folded his arms in a 'this-discussion-is-over' posture. Claire was enraged but complied simply because she couldn't really think of a way to argue with him. At least she didn't argue an irrelevant point constantly like Leon had done. She may have been younger than the officer, but she certainly seemed a lot less naïve in comparison to him.

"So you want to go in there alone? Are you nuts?" Claire complained in what was a last attempt to change his mind.

"I have a submachine gun." Kain told her. "I am more than physically able to deal with the zombies and monsters of this world and if I am outnumbered then the weapon would be a helpful alternative." Kain tried the strategy he used on Sherry loosely with Claire, softening his voice lightly. "The monsters of this night are nothing compared to what I had faced and defeated. You don't need to fear for my safety, infact" Kain tossed Claire his submachine gun and she caught it just before it hit the wooden floor. "I don't need this at all."

"You can't do that!"

-"He can, Claire!" Sherry spoke up, gently spinning in the leather swivel chair that belonged to Chief Irons. "I saw him kill a whole bunch of zombies with his bare hands in a couple of seconds!" Claire turned to Kain in impressed shock, though Kain couldn't understand why she was so surprised about his prowess; did she think he was exaggerating?

Kain moved to the secret passageway but was stopped from behind in the doorframe by Claires' gentle hand on his shoulder.

"What do we do if you don't come back?" She asked grimly, and Sherry felt her heart sink down to the very pit of her stomach at the insinuation that this could be the last they see of him… But Claire was right to bring it up. The comment brought the entire situation back down to earth from the excitement of seeing her two rescuers together and back to the dark seriousness of the state of affairs. They had to be prepared for the 'just-in-case' situations.

Inside, Kain was cross at the implication that he was in someway sufficiently inferior to the mindless zombies that they would so effortlessly defeat him, but oddly enough to him the rage didn't sit in his chest for very long. It dissolved away with a playful smirk.

"That, Claire Redfield, is not going to happen."

"Where does that confidence come from?" Claire joked with an ironic grin and smiling back, Kain and Claire parted ways. Sherry stared nervously up at Claire with her anxious, childlike features cringed in a strangely maternal worry. She flinched at the sudden metal sound in the corridor, like a gate being drawn open, then closed, and the mechanical rattling of an unstable old lift descending from the passageway.

Sherry looked back to Claire when the sounds had ceased with that same anxiety about her entire manner. Sherry didn't know why she felt so strange about him leaving them; she knew he could handle himself, why get so upset? She missed her mother and her father both very much, but her longing for them was inexplicably different than her desire for Kain.

"He'll be okay, sweetheart." Claire said in that wonderfully reassuring musical voice of hers, her eyes soft and understanding but not serving to reassure her as much as she would like it to have.

"I know he'll be okay, Claire…" Sherry said slowly, forcing each word out like it was thick and stiffening in some strange resin of the heart. "… But I also think that he's probably a real bad person back where he comes from, like being nice to us is all a real big strain on him or something… but…" Sherry's eyes were filled with a deep watery emotion that sent alarm bells ringing inside Claires' head. She couldn't decide whether seeing Sherry show such emotion for the savage vampire like this was a good thing or a bad thing. "…But… I really don't want anything bad to happen to him, Claire… I don't know what I'd do to myself if I found out he got hurt real bad…"

Claires' eyebrows rose at that dangerous comment. She may not have been entirely okay with Sherrys' strange set of emotions for a man who physically appeared old enough to be her own father, but she felt it was her duty to protect Sherry while Kain was away.

"Sweetie," She began, walking tenderly closer to Sherry, the small girl losing her hold on her ambivalent feelings with each step Claire took, clutching at the arms of the leather chair harder and harder until her nails dug into the material in long grey scratches. "Kain wouldn't want you to hurt yourself because of him." Claire then smiled, but didn't let up on her concerned look for her frightened little Sherry Birkin. "He doesn't show it very well but I get that he likes you a lot, and besides, if he found out you were getting all weepy over him going to fight those monsters then he'd probably be really offended." Sherry chuckled slightly but Claire could tell that she was still pretty worried about him. Claire would have thought it was rather sweet if the 'he' in question wasn't a genocidle maniac of a vampire with an extremely antisocial demeanour. Claire preferred it when she had a crush on Leon. He was a youthful young man with boyish charm and good looks. Kains' appeal was far from naïve and boyish, though Claire could easily see why a mature female would find him appealing. It just wasn't comfortable that such a little girl would dig that sort of… man… But Sherry never once said her feelings from Kain were a crush; maybe she really was just concerned for him…? Maybe she saw in him a fathering figure, a void that he filled with the absence and possibly death of her parents.

At least, she hoped she loved him like a father…

The green stonewalls of the seemingly gothic-horror style secret underground passageway appeared slimy and damp in the dull light cast by the flickering orange flame of classical wooden torches leniently dotted along the walls of the sinister dungeon-like corridor. Kain felt this corridor would no be out of place in one of Voradors' dank, cruel torture cells back in his home world of Nosgoth. It was most unusual that in a world so futuristic to the vampire, one would have such a gothic passageway of stonewalls and wood burning light sources hidden beneath the modern-furnished building of the R.P.D… Whoever dwelt here had a taste that reminded him so intently of Voradors'. Vorador, before his near-death experience evolving a certain elderly conniving time streamer and a guillotine, was more than just a callous man and prided himself on his soulless torture of innocent human beings for his amusement but had claimed to have changed somewhat in recent years. Granted, there was a time in his vampiric existence as a fledgling where Kain would have been similarly amused by the torture of humans. It didn't matter to him then whether they were innocent or not; he believed all humans were born for the pleasure of the vampire race-

-Kain stopped for a moment, finding himself become a little frustrated by his own ideals: Had his tastes really changed that much since Mortanius first freed him of the curse of humanity? Or was it only current events that had changed his views? -

-Kain ignored himself and continued his slow and cautions pace down the dank murky corridor. He found no shame in freely admitting the humans of this world were not the humans who support the genocide of his kind back in his world, but just how different from the far more tolerant humans of this world were the ones on his?

Each of his heavy footsteps were amplified by the hard cobbles to an extent that Kain feared it would give away his prescience to who or whatever lay in wait for him at the end of this corridor. Kain could not ignore the fact that a human of this world designed this place. Granted, they were different from the ones on Nosgoth, but this whole area of shimmering, uninviting blackish green stone warned him that in some places of this world one could find a human with the same pitiless heart as the humans he was used to back home.

Kain finally came to the conclusion of the alleyway: A large, dark-wooden door rimmed with black metal and a dark rusting ring as its handle. By the framed of two recently lit and burning torches, Kain was warned that someone must have been here recently to ignite them. Kain even shook his head as he advanced to the door, seeing chains with wrist-sized rings handing from them on the wall next to the door. This indeed seemed to be some kind of sadistic chamber to the darker pleasures of death and misery.

Taking hold of the tarnished black ring, Kain pushed his body again the wood and the door slid loudly and creakily open on intentionally rusty hinges into a chamber of similar dank stone brick. The stench of strong disinfectant was the first thing he could truly sense about the room, the smell knocking him back it was so intense. The room itself had been a chamber dedicated to torture, as he suspected, and entering into the room, looking it over with his yellow eyes that were still mildly stinging from the strong artificial cologne, he pieced together the purpose of the strange collection of jars of pickled organs and bloodied cutting instruments. This room was dedicated to the art of taxidermy: The extracting of organs and fluids from a dead animal and filling them with preserving substances to make life-like ornaments. The large bench in the centre of the room was still stained in fresh blood, which ran on an intentional slope on the desk into a bucket full of the red nectar placed beneath it. The bloods scent had been masked by the painfully strong odours of chemicals and the thought of feeding from this blood was not the most appetizing image to Kain; it was no doubt infected with the waste chemicals and would make for terrible feeding.

He entered further into the dank room, his gaze tracing curiously over the shelves of preserved organs from various animals, and coming to rest upon a rusty metal lid on the floor of the chamber possibly leading to yet a lower level of the R.P.D, basement or perhaps, a way of the building altogether-

-The door behind him banged violently closed. Kain jumped around, remembering he was weapon-less, and hissed at the source of the noise, baring his fangs, causing them to grown longer in preparation of attack.

What he saw was a middle-aged man he had recognised before from his short life in the town. The man was the piggish Police Chief Brian Irons, and he was armed, training the handgun on Kains chest. When Kain had entered, Irons must have been hiding behind the door and Kain mentally kicked himself for not sensing the prescience of the man so he wouldn't have walked into this obvious ambush. The man was fat, moustachioed, and wore one of those sleeveless pullovers that made every man who wore them appear ten years older than they actually were. The expression on his ugly face was of a grim satisfaction at having captured the vampire.

Irons chuckled. "So you made it this far. Not bad for some lanky Goth!"

"Chief Irons." Kain snarled, making his abhorrence evident, letting him see that because he was armed, it did not mean he was in control. The Chief saw things differently.

"I can only assume you're with that girl. The ones who claims to be the sister of Chris Redfield." Irons laughed. "I supposed it was the most obvious choice. She looked a bit like Redfield, but I really don't see why she believed I would favour the sister of that cocky bastard."

"What are you babbling about you foolish old man?" Kain growled in confusion, not understanding Irons' reasons for refusing to believe Claires' truth.

"I'm talking about the spy, as if you didn't know. Your accomplice." He smirked in smug pride for sniffing out what he thought to be his plans.

"I work for no man as his agent, pig." Kain spat, but apparently this commanding aura was having no effect on the insane police chief. And if this sanctuary of death was indeed his, then he was insane long before the monsters of Raccoon got to him.

-"Shut up!" Irons spat back, aiming the gun at Kain at arms length, moving slowly and slimily towards him like a sickening, slick snake. "Those monsters from Umbrella have destroyed my beautiful town! How dare you pretend to know nothing of them! You're one of those spies sent to finish me off!"

Kain backed away but was stopped by the far wall. He acknowledged that to his left was the floor-exit to the subbasement but it appeared firmly locked. Kain didn't yet have the strength to pound through the thick metal covering. He couldn't (and most likely wouldn't, if offered the choice) escape and as of yet he couldn't risk fighting Irons. A well aimed bullet from any gun was enough to kill him and unlike the hysterical William Birkin just before he became a G-Mutant when he fired randomly in his general direction, Irons was a police chief with military training: He wouldn't miss a whole clip like that.

"You flatter yourself to believe Umbrella did all this to Raccoon just to spite you."-

-"IT'S ALL UMBRELLAS' FAULT!" Boomed Irons over Kains last words. "And everything's been going downhill ever since I started to associate with Birkin! That's where it all went wrong! William Birkin and his neurotic wife and brat daughter! I should have never have opened my town to them!"

Of course… remembering the papers Leon had recovered from Ben, Irons had been accepting bribes to keep things quiet for Birkin from some time… But Birkin paid Irons extra to keep spies from the city – the very spies in dark clothing that had attempted to rob the viruses from Birkin and had caused this whole disaster!

"You fool!" Barked Kain. "It was your incompetence that caused this! Had you been doing what Birkin paid you to do than just spending the money to build you disgusting little collection, then those armed men would not have found Birkin with his G-virus and caused the T-virus leak!"

"How dare you blame me for this!" Screamed Irons, close to melting point now, thumping his free fist against a fiercely aching temple with his thick voice echoing sharply in the cold stone chamber. "And now Umbrella has even managed to ruin my plans for revenge! Why did it have to be you, you filthy man, and not the fine young girl to come down here! I had it all planned out what I would do to her to make her pay for her employers' crimes and now you've managed to ruin that too! Does Umbrella want my every chance at a little fun on this night stripped away from me?"

"You sick pervert…" Kain found himself muttering under his breath out of sheer hatred. Unfortunately, Irons heard him.

"You….. DARE?" Irons, for some reason, let this go, stalking closer even still to Kain until he was inches away from the vampire with his gun still trained on his body. Irons may have been as mad as a hatter, but not too stupid. If Kain tried to snatch the gun at such close a range then Irons would take his head off with that weapon. "I suppose it doesn't really matter any more what you have to say, or any of us for that matter. No one survives alone, spy. But if I have to go… I'm going to take you with me!" –

- Gyraaaahh-

Birkins' roar! But very close by! So incredibly ear-splitting and skull rattling close that Kain would have sworn the monster was in this very chamber-

-The metal cover on the floor exploded into two pieces flying into the air as though they were made of cardboard, one of them striking Irons' body and causing the area to become torn, both flesh and clothing mangled into each other. Iron glanced at him in confused horror, and then from the pit burst a humongous claw fist wrapping itself around Irons' ankle and dragging him down into the darkness below. The moment he disappeared from Kains' view, the screaming began and spurts of Irons' blood and gore rupturing up, splattering Kain, nearly completely covering his boots in a thin later of red slime and splattering at his face with dark dots of the fat mans liquid.

The expression on Kain face was unchanged from his usual countenance of stern heartlessness as the horrifying struggle below finished with a final scream from Chief Irons. Kain snorted to himself, feeling there was at least some justice on this night. He thought Claire was a spy; an ironic condemnation since all the evidence Kain had discovered for the existence of an agent pointed to Ada, a woman being protected by one of his own officers.

From the gloomy pit rose bitter cold air wafting upon it the thick scent of human blood. It invigorated Kains' senses to the point of excitement but Kain didn't descend to face the bizarre police chiefs' killer just yet, just to be sure he did not fall onto an awaiting attack.

Kain smiled when he remembered the roar he had heard seconds before the attack. It had been William Birkins' physical form, the G-Mutant, which had been responsible for 'saving' him. The question was, had Birkin done this deliberately to protect Kains' life, and in the process his Sherrys', or had the mindless G-Mutant attacked out of nonsensical hunger and rage and saving Kain had only been a mere coincidence?

Feeling he should posses more courage on the matter of facing the G-Mutant, sentient or not, Kain crouched by the blood-rimmed opening in the grey stone floor-

-and something, moving too fast for even Kain to see straight away, burst free from the hole. Kain dived back out of the way as it struck the ceiling, leaving a horrid bloody mark, and thumping in a cold wet splat to the grey stone floor. The scent of fresh human blood engulfed Kain and he recognised the object that had burst from the pit to be Brian Irons, or at least what was left of his top half. His face and head had been left relatively free of any mutilation, except from an unnatural dent on his skull left from violently impacting the ceiling. His arm was also free of any serious damage, but his right arm, the weapon arm, was missing altogether, only parts of jagged bone protruding from a gory shoulder socket. The shoulder that had held his right, weapon wielding arm looked as if it had been blown apart, the arm torn from his body with just such a great and powerful force that if left him looking as if he had held a grenade for too long. Irons' body ended just below his ribs, parts of his insides trailing out over the floor along with a steadily spreading pool of blood and bits of curved bone that must have been parts of his ribcage.

Kain stepped over the mess back to the hole… but found himself unable to ignore the thick scent of fresh blood filling the room. He licked his lips. He was just so thirsty… He had had to restrain himself so much on this night… He figured he deserved a medal from not killing Leon and Ada back in the chess-plug-door room, and he could have quite easily have done it.

Willing Irons blood to his mouth was easy enough even as weakened as he was. The thick screamer of blood seemed to taste far more delicious than any other blood he had taken recently. It must have been because he had denied himself the pleasure to feed on those mortals that made this blood taste so much better than he was used to. His mouth had been aching for this moment and the abrupt burst of flavours across his thirsty tongue assaulted his yearning senses with sweet flavour so aggressively that he cringed in pure pleasure.

Down below, a similar event was taking place. The occasional soft growl and snap of bone sounded up from the hole as the Birkin monster fed on Irons' body parts and satiated his need for flesh.

Kain jumped down the hole when he had finished with his part of Irons to face the creature below. He could've taken the steel ladder down, but the drop was only about four meters – a short distance to fall for a vampire. The rungs of the ladder were stained blood, much like everything else Kain beheld in the strange subbasement. Irons had put up a fight, it would seem, but losing his weapon arm had cost him dearly. After the blood on the rungs came a blotch-like puddle directly below the entrance, as if one has poured a bucket on blood into the subbasement itself. From this Kain could tell Irons had been clinging to the ladder for his life when the monster pulled him so violently his body tore into pieces and his weapon arm, the arms he was clinging hold with, was torn clean off. He must have been pulled in half, too from the looks of the mess Kain had jumped right down into. Irons had technically died directly below the subbasement entrance, so why hadn't Kain seen this happening? His yellow eyes could penetrate even the thickest gloom – vampires were naturally night hunters – unless of course, something had been in the way… Something so huge and dark that Kain had mistaken it for the night itself…

The subbasement was actually just a metal platform with railing suspended over a kind of cave filled with stalactites that picked up a green colour from whatever shimmering liquid was at the bottom of the marvellously deep cavern. Kain couldn't help but look down through the steel-grating floor to the strange blackish shimmering a great distance below-

-And in the water he made out the faint shape of Irons' missing arm. Kain smiled to himself, amused by the sight of the mans still-clothed arm bobbing around in the dark liquid below, suppressing a small chuckle at how ridiculous it looked. –

- There was the sound of snapping bone not too far in front of him and Kains' eyes snapped up to meet the source. Kain bared his teeth angrily; How could he have failed to sense yet another prescience? What was going so wrong for him to fail in one of the most basic aspects of vampire supersensitivity?

The … creature he beheld had a haphazard path of blood and tattered bone leading from Kain's position to it, like some kind of sick red carpet leading to the demonic murderer itself, and demonic was really the only words he could find to describe what he was seeing.

Birkin had changed since the last time they met in the sewers. He was beginning to look like less of the sickeningly mutilated man he was back at the time of infection and more like a huge demon with the head of a man. Its body was twice the size it was back in the sewers, a chest of huge, hard and thick it appeared almost as impenetrable as a wall of concrete. Most of Birkins' clothing had been stretched to such an extent that it had simply fallen off, leaving the monster clothed with only a meagre piece of lab coat around his right shoulder and a pair of unnaturally stretched genes around his waist. It still had one vaguely human looking arm, but Kain knew that no part of it should be underestimated; it had evolved to such an extent that Kain began to wonder if even he stood a chance against it. The demons of Nosgoth were much bigger, but Birkin had greatly accelerated in growth in recent hours. (Kain had read that cell division in life forms is preceded by a resting state. Birkin must have been in this resting state in the days between the sewer incident and the takeover in Raccoon and now was the time that it had finished resting and started growing at an hideously rapid rate.)

It had its massive back to Kain, but as it turned to face him, Kain shivered at the look of the head upon its enormous, monstrous body. It was completely human, utterly untouched by the plague that riddled his body. What chilled Kain the most was remembering that when Kain last looked the thing in the face, its whole right side had been covered in thick fatty tendrils pawing at the puss-dripping right eye. Also, Kain recalled shredding most of the monsters' face up with a strike from his claws, yet not a mark, not one single hint of a blemish was upon Birkins' pale, cream-hued face. It had recovered perfectly, yet it had not replaced the weak human tissue with G-virus enhanced structure as it had done with every other part of his body.

Blood dripped from Birkins' mouth, blood that Kain could smell was clearly not his own, but Irons' and he watched Kain wordlessly as it chewed down bits of the man, a melancholic expression on his eerily untouched face. Kain didn't know what to do. Sherry and Claire were the kind of women that would follow him down if he failed to come back despite the obvious danger of them suffering a similar fate. He had to clear the path for them, but Birkin had grown formidably, yet didn't appear in an aggressive mood even though it possessed the inclination to mutilate a man Birkin had apparently known well in life.

Birkin rose to its feet, standing tall on massive tree-trunk legs, pivoting to face Kain. Crouched, its huge wide body had caused it to appear a bit taller than it was, but still Kain readied himself for whatever attack would follow…

But an attack never came. Birkin marched his huge girth to the railings sluggishly, hauling the weight of the massive body giving his movements a tired edge to them, and threw himself over with a mangled phlegmy moan. There was no splash. There was no thud. Kain ran his fingers through his white hair trying to figure out what to do next. Vampires had a different take on carnage than humans. He was perfectly fine walking through a carpet of human blood and innards. Sherry and Claire wouldn't be. Heck, for all her talk, Sherry was still only twelve and defiantly wouldn't take well to coming through here. Also there was the element of danger posed by the return of the Birkin monster he had to worry about… Kain hung his head in the unsettling silence of the cavern, trying to think to a plan.

"Do you think he's okay?"

"He'll be fine, sweety."

"But he's been gone for longer than five minuets!"

"I'm sure he's okay, Sherry." But the truth was that she wasn't so sure. Kain was too confident, too arrogant to succeed on a night like this. It may have sounded arrogant to think as such, but it was the truth. So many had died on this night. What made him any different? And she let him persuade her to letting him go down there weapon-less too! It was his whole manner that did it. His voice was like dark silk and mixed with the penetrating glare of his eyes, he could persuade her into doing practically anything! Of course, she wouldn't mind it if he persuaded her into doing a certain something for him…

-Okay, now was a very bad time to be having dirty thoughts… Besides he behaved like the kind of man who considered himself way above such things… he may have looked nice but he wasn't even really her type anyway.

-And here she was referring to him in the third person as if his fate was already sealed!

Claire rose to her feet and Sherry looked up in a childish mix of panic and excitement.

"What are you doing?" She asked, jumping up from Chief Irons' leather swivel chair.

"I'm going to find him." Claire replied, heading to elevator Kain took beyond the secret entrance.

"Oh no you're not!" Yelled Sherry, rushing to meet her. "I'm not letting you leave me all alone! I'm sick of hiding and now we're together I want it to stay that way!"

"But it's too dangerous to"-

-"Oh as if I haven't worked out everything here is too dangerous for me! But I'm still alive all the same!"

She had a point. It was too dangerous to let her go, but it was too dangerous to leave her behind too. Kain had realised that a long time ago. Claire figured her heart and her head were in conflict and had been ever since she saw that first zombie back in Emmies' Diner, shortly before meeting Leon…

"Fine, you can come." Claire said softly and sympathetically. "But you have to remember that even though you're pretty sure of your abilities you're still only a little girl and that means you'll be especially easy prey for some of those monsters."

"I know Claire." Sherry said, trying to appear braver than she felt. "But I'm scared for him, even if he doesn't want me to be. I want to come."

Claire smiled softly, feeling warmed inside at Sherrys' compassion for such a callous monster but was more than a little creeped out at the relationship that had formed between the tiny child and that tall, powerful and no doubt ancient vampire.

The two fell silent when they reached Irons' sick torture/taxidermy chamber. It took them a few moments to even open their eyes fully from the strong reek of antiseptic.

"…Did he come through here, Claire?" Sherry asked her voice mildly laced with panic.

"I don't know sweety." Claire responded, but her voice was cut blunt when she noticed the large, unmistakable splodge of red on the grey ceiling of the tomb-like room. Sherry followed Claires' eyeshot to the splatter and gasped, grasping at and squeezing Claires hand tightly. They traced the circumference of the cold stone chamber around a large tatty wooden desk-

-To see half a body by a manmade hole in the floor. Claire raised her eyebrows and glanced desperately down to see Sherrys' reaction of disgust and horror. It was the top half of a man that had been shredded in two, and he was directly above the mildly dripping splatter on the ceiling…-

-…but something didn't add up…

"There's something strange about this…" Said Claire, frowning slightly. She couldn't work out what she was seeing that was wrong, but it was there, lurking like a bad smell of which you couldn't find the source of.

Sherry laughed sarcastically and let go of her hand. "He doesn't have a lower body!"

"Not that…" Claire grew agitated at being unable to work out what was wrong about the corpse and it showed in her voice, causing her reply to be more of a snap. But then suddenly Claire realised why Sherry had let go of her hand. She crouched down next to the half of body and put her hand up inside its ribcage. "SHERRY! What are you doing!" She didn't have time to pull away and so dumbstruck by her actions that all she could do was watch in sickned disgust with one hand clasped over her mouth as the little girl hand her hand in the body of the mutilated man.

Sherry drew out her hand again… But it was dry. Bone dry. Not a single drop of blood or bodily fluid was on her hand. She looked out fearfully at Claire and abruptly Claire understood what it was she was seeing that was wrong with the corpse: There wasn't a drop of blood anywhere around it. The ceiling was still dripping with freshly let blood meaning he had recently struck it while still bloodied, but here he was on the floor and there wasn't even a steadily spreading puddle beneath him. Sherry had put her hand inside and there it came into no liquid. Granted, there was a lot of ruptured tissue strewn about the body, but it all had a rubbery latex look about it, as if it were fresh but unbloodied.

"Did…" Sherry began. "Did… Kain kill him?" She looked very frightened and Claire held her against her pink-denim-clad body. The man had been drained bone dry. It certainly looked like Kain killed him … but he wouldn't leave a corpse lying here like this knowing full well they'd probably follow him, would he? "You're taking too long to reply!" Butt in Sherry, breaking Claire out of her critical thinking. Her starting, questioning blue eyes were painful to behold. They were filled with such a sense of fear and betrayal…

"No…" Claire finally answered, even though she wasn't so sure herself. "He wouldn't kill someone like this if he knew you'd find it, sweetie."

"Then why doesn't he have any blood left?" Sherry asked. Claire awkwardly smiled; Sherry wasn't going to let this drop easily.

"Maybe he found him here like this and drained his blood?"

"Then that means there's something really strong down here…"

She was right and realising this filled Claire with a new kind of dread. The body may have been dry but the salty metal musk of human blood wafted up from the strange basement exit. Something big was down there… And if Kain wasn't here, then he must have gone after whatever did this to that man, unless it dragged him down there, of course…

-Sherry was already making her way down the ladder.

"Wait up sweetie!" Claire protested, following her down into the subbasement. Getting to the bottom, Claires' boots splashed in something wet.

"Oh shit…" Said Sherry.

"Don't swear." Claire told her, but as she turned around to see what she saw, she couldn't help but respond in the same way. "Oh shit…"

It looked as if someone had intentionally thrown a bucket of blood across the entire walkway, laced with bits of broken bones and skin and at one point along the steel walkway there was a mass of tattered unrecognisable gore that must have been what was left of the lower half of the man, but it was impossible to tell…

"Kain…" Muttered Sherry to herself as Claire moved past her and along the walkway, checking over the area which concluded at another set of ladders heading upwards. "Did you do this? But… if you didn't do this, then are you still capable of it?" Of course he had to be. Such callous indifference… It could only be achieved one way…-

-"Hey, what's this?" Claire questioned aloud form the other side of the walkway (that was and upside-down 'L' shape, as far as Sherry could tell.) Sherry ran over to meet her, seeing her grasp at a bundle of red cloth rapped around a rung of the ladder exiting from the subbasement. It had been tied in a loose knot apparently, and had not been simply dropped there in a struggle. Sherrys' face lit up; it was Kain red-shawl like cloth had had strapped around his chest.

"Why'd you think he left this here?" Asked Claire, staring in confusion at the ball of red material, trying to figure out Kains' motives for abandoning it seemingly without reason.

"So we'd know he came this way!" Squealed Sherry in excitement while snatching the red cloth from her leather-gloved hands. "He put this here so we'd know he's okay and that he's gone ahead to make sure things are safe for us."

Claire smiled warmly. Sherry was probably right but Kain would have phrased his explanation differently so his actions sounded less concerned for their well-being. His actions suggested he cared a lot about what happened to him, but to see the man interact with them would totally devastate that theory. He only appeared gentle to Sherry, and that was because she was but a frail little girl.

Sherry unwound the red material and held it at both corners, throwing it over her head and tying the two corners around her neck to make kind of a little makeshift cloche around her back and shoulders. Claire chuckled. She looked like Little Red Riding Hood in it, with her large bright eyes and innocent countenance.

"You look real sweet, Sherry." Claire encouraged warmly, and Sherry blushed.

"Do you think Kain'll be mad if he sees me in his thing like this?"

"Not at all, sweetie." She smiled. "And even if he is, he'll probably be pretending to look mad because he really thinks you look quite cute."

Sherry seemed to blush even harder at her remarks, then paused a moment to deeply inhale, picking up the scent in the fabric.

"It still smells like him…" She mused, almost wistfully, her eyes becoming cloudy and dreamy.

"You are way to young to start appreciating things like that." Claire mocked, before preceding up the ladder, followed by Sherry.

After travelling through a hole in the cavernous ceiling, the scenery changed very dramatically. They were now in a creamish-white coloured sewer chamber with the walls tainted with smudges of dark greenish smears. They had arrived on a platform just above water level, the exit to the area appearing to be an incredibly rusty and thick door that opened mechanically vertically like large chopping teeth.

Claire jumped down into the semi-treated green waters first, helping down Sherry afterwards.

"Lets get out of here." Claire said with a warm smile, trying to reassure Sherry that their situation wasn't completely hopeless without the assistance of Kain-

- Chips of grit toppling down from somewhere above them sprinkled on their shoulders. Claire and Sherry turned around, looking up to a balcony a short distance above them to see what-

-It was a man, only it was twice the size of any normal man, bald and in a green trench coat and built like a barn. They saw it from behind, but could feel the unnatural dark, evil, power-filled aura emanating from it.

Sherry threw her arms around Claire and squeezed hard, her face looking up at her, eyes filled with fear.

"Claire?" Her voice was a shaky and uncertain, and Claire felt much the same way. The giant trench coat man began to gradually turn and suddenly Claire realised she badly didn't want to see that things face. Her blood ran cold.

"Run!" She hollered. The both dashed through the ankle high putrid water to the rusty metal door, slamming on the release button causing the door to creek open mechanically. To Sherry, it felt like it was taking forever for the door to wind open far enough for them to jump through. Claire lifted Sherry in as soon as the gap of the opening door was big enough for her to enter and then followed through, crouching in and slamming again on the button on the other side to cause it to wind the opposite direction into closing. Claire heard a heavy wet thump on the other side just before the door finally closed tight and didn't dare to think of what it could be.

Sherry was terrified, dripping with sudden cold sweat and pressed up against the wall by Claires' gloved hand. The alleyway they had escaped into was just as water filled as the previous one, but instead boasted cascades of water exiting waste pipes along the walls. She didn't have enough time to wonder why the room wasn't flooding from the excess of water before her heart skipped a beat from a bizarre and unexpected tugging on her ankles. Her gaze shot down at her feet to see the water she was standing in splash fiercely about her. Claire too had noticed this, her fearful visage transferring from the danger beyond the rusty entrance to the danger threatening Sherry-

-But her attention was gripped too late to save Sherry from the finally violent tug from beneath her. Sherry screamed and then she was being sucked into the wall and out of sight. Claire yelled out to her simultaneously, but couldn't grab her in time to stop her from being dragged down into the drainage system into the bowls of the sewer system deep beneath the city.

Sherrys' screaming had disappeared and all that remained was the constant roar of the waves of treated water pouring from the wall pipes. Claire was dumbstruck. A moment ago, Sherry was standing here with her and now she had been sucked away before her very eyes and there was nothing she could have done to prevent it. Claire wanted to cry but knew that wouldn't solve anything. She couldn't get down there… The situation felt hopeless. Claires fight drained from her like Sherrys' disappearance had punctured a hole in her body and from it her soul poured, the entire amount draining from her in a matter of seconds-

-but a spark of hope remained.

Kain.

She had to find Kain and tell him what had happened to Sherry.

Sherry hurt all over. She was soggy all over, too. Climbing to her feet, she was aware she wasn't with Claire anymore and in some remote part of the sewage system. Her first instinct was to get to someplace sheltered, following the passage along to a storage room, but upon arriving in the icy cold chamber, from the stench of rot in there she could tell she was less than safe in here than she was outside in the stinking wet alleyway. She saw an ominous inky shadow swaying softly from behind a stack of shelves, immediately recognising it as the movement pattern of a patiently waiting zombie. It was very close by, but Sherry (somehow) suppressed her fear and focus on the ventilation shaft opposite the unsteady shadow of the inadequately concealed monster. It wasn't covered, and bracing herself, she dashed for it, ignoring the wail of the beast that was now behind her and forced her way into the shaft and up the abrupt upward kink. The conclusion of the shaft was a large, circular pipe of a room, which could only be described as a cylindrical alleyway wrought with rust and bits of slime and decay. Upon her arrival, bugs traced the sides of the tunnel, fanning out from a rustling cluster of them on the ceiling. Sherry didn't stop running. Those bugs looked bigger than your usual cockroach and she didn't want to hang around to see if they were changed to unnatural, dangerous proportions by the madness of the night.

At the opposite end was another open vent, and squeezing through, Sherry emerged into a very different room. This one was large and cubed in shape, not so rusty and with garbage lining the chamber. -

-But in the centre sparkled a large slivery disc, a disc with a strange picture carved on the front of it. Sherry crouched down to it, hugging her knees into her chest, a sight of exasperation leaving her tired lungs. This room was a dead end and it seemed that this strange silver emblem with the carving of a wolf upon it was the item this mini-labyrinth had been leading to. It was strange that one would have cast such a pretty thing into the waist disposal system when it appeared practically brand-new, save for a few slight scratches on its back. Sherry frowned. Three stone placed in a strange mechanism on a puzzle lock opened the strange door in Irons' office, and this had scratches on it too in corresponding places. Sherry picked it up, tracing its rounded edges with her chilly fingers and feeling that it was certainly very scratched along its rounded sides from incessant overuse. It wasn't as heavy as it seemed, but a fair, hefty weight that made her wonder if she could lug it around for as long as she might have to. Those stones Kain had didn't appear feather light, either and he had lugged them around for near-on two hours without feeling their dead weight build up at his side. If he could do it, then she …. well… she'd certainly try to do it, too. He'd be very proud of her if this were a major part of some mysterious sewer puzzle. She grinned a goofy smirk picturing Kain thank her for being so clever… But then snorted to herself when she found herself unable to picture him smile in kind appreciation and so the fantasy fell apart altogether. He just might say thank you but he'd say it insincerely, or break off into a totally different line of conversation, or give her a lecture on how she shouldn't have gone after the damn thing in the first place… Adults sucked…

-The whole room shook violently and Sherry shot up onto her feet. There was a dark mechanical rumbling coming from everywhere behind the thick rusted walls that Sherry didn't like one bit.-

-She screamed as the ground mechanically parted in two and swallowed her up and along with numerous garbage bags, she plunged down into the room below. Everything was spinning past her, and then it wasn't, and only the pain of landing remained. She was dazed and confused, the wolf medal clanking somewhere around her, and with a final whine, she passed out. She was tired, she was hungry, she was wet, she was lonely and without realising it she had been afraid, the terror of the night becoming so familiar to her that she had presumed she had simply become used to the carnage and the fear of not knowing if the next zombie could be the one to get you. She had been wrong. The shock and pain of falling and landing the sewage disposal chamber had knocked the last bit of sanity out of her and thrown her into a silent shock educed slumber…

Unfortunately, this wasn't the end of the ordeal for the small girl lying with her face down in the cities trash. At least she was unconscious for the poor luck that would befall her now, unlike its previous victim, Ben Bertolucci.

He saw his daughter fall and land and faint, yet he wasn't filled with the parental urge to whip her up into his arms and hold her tightly, and he wasn't overwhelmed by a sense of sorrow for the suffering that had befallen his child. Ask he stood there in the sewage water with nothing but emptiness in his heart and soul, the pulsating orangey G-virus eye on William Birkins' right shoulder started to burn into the tiny girl, commanding its increasingly mindless human host into sating its will. The G-virus wanted to make more of itself, to reproduce by implanting embryos into victims and having its beautiful offspring rip free from the frail human flesh and growing and covering the earth with its own spawn. The one that had torn free from Ben had been weak; it forced its way out soon after implantation because of the possibility that the humans that had found him would kill him, destroying the creature along with it. It had been prematurely born, and so was weak and flimsy, but the child was a much different host. She was the daughter of them, the mixed creatures - G-virus and Birkin, and they both knew without doubt that hatching offspring from the chest of someone who shared genetic material with the implanter would bare the strongest fruit. The girl and the vampire wouldn't killer the child either. They'd try to find a way to save her, in vain of course, because the only way to cure her required access to his 'P-4 Laboratory' to make the vaccine and Kain clearly had no intentions to go back into the very room William had awakened him from in the first place.

Birkin rammed the tentacle from his left hand down his unconscious daughters throat and felt nothing inside. No shame, no regret, just the G-virus and its mindless desires taking over his brain. It told Birkin smile, the once great mind of the scientist now little more than the puppet of the virus and slave to its intentions. The embryo slid in with no problems, and in a matter of seconds, his daughters' death sentence had been written. It would take a few hours to hatch, possibly, if the embryo inside saw no reason to burst free prematurely.

Birkin left that place, climbing the ladder out of the pool of garbage and sewage water with his unnaturally warped body still with the smile forced onto his face by the G-virus and could already hear the heavy footsteps of someone in the alleyway in the next room moving towards the sediment pool. The combination of Birkins' mind and the viruses will wished it to be the vampire, for his protection would ensure the safety of his implanted embryos.-

-William Birkins' will intruded for a moment into the stark callousness of the virus-mind like a knife cutting through soft, unsuspecting skin. The lightning quick slice was sharp, unexpected and extremely painful and cut through the heart like a samurai blade through a ripe tomato. Had he had his complete will, Birkin would have been constantly bleeding inside, but the virus impassively ignored the mans emotions, knowing that they would soon pass as soon as it would mutated onto the next stage.