The four arrived at a seemingly oblivious unused factory; it was a charade to hide NEST from the public. Scott pushed away from a hatch door and climbed the ladder first; he hoisted Sherry from Claire. Sherry was unconscious, but Claire kept her snug in her arm close to her chest.

The turntable control room looked run down, dimly lit by the single light source, and dust was forming everywhere. Ignoring all the worker's equipment of hard hats, work schedules and the latter, Scott went to the only functional terminal at the corner desk. He knew what he was doing.

"What are we doing here?" Parker queried. "We're so far away from the city now…"

"We're in a fake factory on the outskirts of Raccoon," Scott replied, typing quickly on the terminal's keyboard. "The gondola journey was longer than you'd think."

"Is this where NEST is?"

"Indeed, Claire. We're not too far from a safe room below either; we need to take the locomotive down."

"Locomotive?"

Scott turned to Claire and signalled towards the door near him with his hands. "There's a locomotive outside we'll take down into the facility. We'll take Sherry to the security room on basement level four, and we'll get to finding a cure-"

"Then a way out?" Parker interrupted.

"Yes, but not until we save Sherry." Scott came off the terminal as heavy machinery was heard outside the room. "We're not the only ones coming and going through here, by the way. Someone took the locomotive down already."

"Who could that be?"

"Annette…"

Parker pointed at herself. "Me?"

"Other Annette. Birkin…"

The said yellow locomotive was outside the control room; it arrived from a few levels below up to theirs on the ground floor. It was around five in the morning as the sun's rays penetrated through the gloomy grey clouds of the night sky, which wasn't enough to make it any less cold.

As you would expect, the sizeable locomotive was large enough to carry a small team. Though the platform had tracks like a train, it had the makings of an elevator. The activation port had the key in the ignition, and the small machine itself was warm; this locomotive had recently seen a lot of action.

With one twist of the wrist clockwise, the activation alarm blared loudly. "We're almost there..." Scott said, "Ladies first."

There was hardly anything worth mentioning inside, just a comfortable bench and the train cabin where the controls waited. With haste, Claire rested Sherry on the bench and hunched by her. Leon and Parker sat opposite.

"How are you holding up, honey?"

Sherry held her stomach and curled her back. Her teeth gritted against each other. "My stomach hurts… Really hurts…"

"Please hang in there." Claire brushed Sherry's hair and stood up, and walked to Scott for anything on his mind. "She's burning up, Scott."

"There's no doubt she's been injected with a G-embryo."

"What can we do?"

"There's no way to tell how long we have to save her." Scott sighed. "The security room should have something I can use to delay the embryo's growth."

"Is there even a cure?" Parker asked. "We can't waste any time down here."

"It's still developing, but there is a vaccine. We've had schematics documented just in case…"

"G ever broke out?"

Scott pushed his spectacles up closer to his eyes. "G was never supposed to break out…"

Suddenly, something heavy lands on the roof of the locomotive. The ceiling depressed from the high mass, and the descension halted with an alarm blaring inside. The turntable refused to budge due to some commotion outside.

"Something is out there..." Claire's movements were slow, and her ears were fixed on anything else her eyes missed. "We should check it out." She leapt to the door. "Anyone joining me?" She stood ready at the door.

Parker took Claire's old spot by Sherry's side. "I'll keep an eye on Sherry. You three go check it out."

"We intend to," said Leon, "There have been enough surprises for one day."

Scott left the locomotive with Claire and Leon. Then, with the door opening and closing behind them, it locked itself shut. "Perfect…"

"Did the door just lock?"

"Safety precaution."

All was normal for the three when they fanned out to check for their hijacker or whatever the cause for stopping the platform from elevating down. Lights from the walls were the only source that helped the trio to see through the thick darkness.

Their investigation was interrupted when a thick crude iron pipe careened down in Scott's direction. It flung over the railing with great speed and force. It gave away their hijacker, and it wasn't a friendly one.

The same monster creeping around the police department was on top of the locomotive, standing eight feet in height. The robust framework of the mighty monster was still wearing the tattered remains of a lab coat with fresh blood smeared all over the flesh-ripping talons that seemed to have grown more since the last time.

The beast mutated even more from on top of the locomotive. The head merged within the chest, further increasing its muscle mass with another bulge of flesh forming a new face over the shoulders. A large eye protruded through the beefed right arm's tricep, and the talons grew longer and nastier.

"Oh… my… God." Scott took off his spectacles and stood to glare at the monster. "It's William…"

"That's William?"

"He's already evolving beyond his humanity!"

G-Birkin hissed harshly and jutted its arms out at the sides, flaring the talons. It leapt down in between Scott, Claire and Leon. Its forceful landing split the three up in three different directions. It growled, twisted its mass at Scott, and stared at him with murderous intentions.

"Aw shit!" Scott fidgeted his spectacles back on his nose and repeatedly stuttered, "N… N-No! This is not happening!"

G-Birkin roared at the top of its lungs and moved closer to Scott.

"Oh, fuck... He's coming after me!"

G-Birkin swung its massive claws at Scott; the talons barely grazed the tip of his nose. Then, with his head almost cleaved off in a single blow, Scott took out his handgun, stood up to the monster that was once his trusted colleague, and aimed for whatever was left of his human face.

"This wasn't supposed to happen..." Scott often hesitated with his handgun and infrequently fired at the monster; his 9mm rounds barely tickled its torso if they didn't break on impact.

There was no trace of William's humanity left in the walking slab of meat; the only fragment was his face distorted into the chest. Claire and Leon couldn't see the face; they had the advantage of being behind G-Birkin. Even if it was futile to use their handguns, it was surrounded as the monster was a slow slab of tough meat.

Scott ejected his handgun's empty magazine, took out his last one and stumbled into the iron railing behind him. With G-Birkin hot on his trail, he misjudged the distance he was backing away but caught onto the rail. His last magazine dropped into the absolute darkness below, hundreds of feet of nothingness, and his hopes of fending off his dear old friend.

G-Birkin threw all its weight into its claw at Scott and caved in the railing behind him; the iron sheets and bars fell below. Scott tumbled to his right away and dropped his handgun, he tried once to reach for it, but G-Birkin stepped over it closer to him; to reclaim it just wasn't worth the risk.

Like a game of cat and mouse or a sick hunt for prey, G-Birkin chased Scott around the locomotive out of Claire's and Leon's sight. Then, finally, he pulled Claire away by her shoulder to share his thoughts with her about the sudden situation.

"Claire, we cannot fight him with these weapons," Leon said, "we need something bigger."
Claire turned to a broken railing and peered into the darkness below; the lights on the walls just went on forever. The fall was five or six stories at the least and could kill something as mutated and inhumane as William. Someone just needed to tip the scales.

A large sheet of metal was torn from the ground by G-Birkin's meaty paw and heaved in Scott's general direction; the force he took to the side of his chest threw him clean off his feet to the ground. Scott wiped his face and noticed that his eyes were all dizzy and hazy; he had dropped his glasses.

G-Birkin stopped to pick up Scott's grand spectacles. What Scott has never seen in B.O.W.s of any sort was it seemed to recollect an emotion. An otherwise simple one. Anger. It crushed Scott's spectacles with its meaty fist, and the lens' shards crumpled between the digits.

Scott lifted himself from the cold platform and felt a terrible urge to vomit. His diet consisted of terrible rations and medication, and now his little stomach decided to churn.

He saved it until he got back on his feet, and then he heaved the sickly yellow bile around his feet in a gruesome pile of slush. Some symptoms that followed were dilated eyes that adequately obscured Scott's vision; he tripped over his feet and landed on the railing behind him, out of breath.

Time moved slowly; the effects of nausea mixed with the mild trauma a second ago disoriented Scott's rational mind. He barely made out the situation around him; the only thing he could focus on was Claire's voice; she called him to no avail.

Scott always had problems with his head. Had to intentionally punch the dizzy thoughts out of his mind with one well-placed strike. His focus was back on G-Birkin.

Just in the nick of time, Scott threw himself back away from G-Birkin while it was about to land another powerful blow aimed at Scott's face. This blow destroyed the railing behind him and sent it down below.

Scott ran for his dear life into Claire's open arms. But, before she could convince him to keep the monster still and not lead him away, Scott had already run back away and around the locomotive to the other side.

G-Birkin turned around to face Claire and Leon's entirely useless gunfire; it looked like it barely tickled or broke again on impact. Instead,

it just stood there, dumbfounded at where its target was. G-Birkin wanted something other than Claire or Leon. It wanted Scott, who was already taking a breather on the other side of the platform.

With both feet planted into the platform, G-Birkin leapt into the air over the locomotive and plummeted closely to Scott's side just when he thought he could pause to ease his hyperventilation. But, unfortunately, the time for relaxing was cut short; the shockwave around G-Birkin's weight stunned Scott long enough to swing his meaty talons at his torso just as he was primed to retreat further away.
It wasn't fatal, but it wasn't a minor scrape or cut. The blow tore through Scott's lab skin like wrapping paper and his bloody lab coat like it wasn't even there. Scott couldn't feel the wounding at first; though the mindful person he is, he still compressed the bleeding long enough to stabilise it; his blood was that tacky and clotted up.

The chase was back on; G-Birkin stalked quickly after Scott as he rose on his tired legs, backing away to the platform's edge. The railing was destroyed during the first few seconds of the encounter; Scott forgot that fear and tension would make him forget the simplest things. Turning around, G-Birkin was there and to his left were Claire and Leon coming to his rescue.

Scott's warm blood smeared all over Claire's and Leon's hands when they nearly bumped into each other; Scott had no time to talk; he pushed them both off their feet and dived accordingly onto the ground with them. But, before they could shrug off Scott's stupidity, what they didn't know is he, in fact, saved them from G-Birkin's crude talons from tearing through them, its claws cleaved into the ground below their feet.

There was an opportunity; G-Birkin's thick nails were wedged into the platform's iron platings, and it rearranged its body to pull them out. The smartest of men, now a stupid B.O.W., wasted its time pulling and not thinking. Scott saw this opportunity as a window to exploit his weakness; the large pulsating eye in the right tricep was one of them. It wasn't a fact, but it was all he could suggest for the three to damage to their advantage to subdue him.

"The eye!" Scott squealed. "Shoot him in the eye!" Claire and Leon stood back up and relentlessly shot at G-Birkin's extensive mutated eye. The eye couldn't protect itself alone, and G-Birkin could only grumble and howl during its only weakness, and it was working against him with deadly efficiency.

Purple blood splattered and sprayed everywhere, slowly diminishing G-Birkin's strength; it fell on one knee and lost the willpower to pull. Scott drew Claire's extra loaded handgun from her pocket – the Browning she forgot existed – and joined her and Leon in the firing squad-like formation.

Bullets tore the giant eye, and after one bloated eruption of purple juices, G-Birkin howled and pulled its hand from the ground. It toppled over on its back, severely weakened, and the rise of his feet was as slow as ever. Then it leant on the railing, still pursuing the three despite the disadvantage of being at only a quarter or even a tenth of the power and potential it once had earlier.

As they were about to anticipate G-Birkin's next strike, it toppled over the empty spacing where the rail used to be. Its hand slid off the railing, and its weight shifted off the platform. Then G-Birkin was gone from sight and already claimed by the dark below.

"That was a little close for comfort…" said Claire.

"Thanks… A second late here or there, I'd be a goner..." Scott tended to his building stress and nodded Claire and Leon back inside the locomotive on a job well done.