A/N: Hi all,

If there's one thing that is common to author's notes across fanfictions, it's that authors are always begging for reviews. if there's a second, it's that they're apologizing for delays. It's kind of funny when authors who do both get irritated when people review only to ask for updates.

I just thought I would share that with you.

Cheers,

EB

p.s. Sorry for the delay.

Chapter Eight

Not being relentlessly pursued by Nemesis made Faith's life considerably easier than Harry's. It didn't hurt that Carlos had an assault rifle.

At first, Faith had been uneasy about leaving Harry amidst the wreckage. She knew he could take care of himself, but his magical abilities wouldn't do him a lot of good if he were unconscious. However, she had to abandon any program that involved going after him. One glance through a second story window clearly told her that there were way too many critters swarming the wreckage for leftover meat. Whatever guilt she had for starting in on him or for breaking his wand did not extend far enough for her to get herself killed in an ill-advised rescue stunt. Still, she felt distinctly uneasy turning away from that window and Following Carlos through a side entrance and down alleyway after alleyway, slowly and inevitably maneuvering their way towards the Umbrella corporation.

Carlos was a nice enough individual. Faith supposed she could do worse, though his not-so-subtle come-ons were starting to piss her off. Not to mention the fact that he had a bad habit of calling her "lady".

"Hey, lady, slow down!" he said, trotting along behind her. Faith just rolled her eyes. Umbrella was barely two blocks away now and the first rays of summer sunshine were creeping towards them. Faith guessed it was in the neighbourhood of three in the morning, which meant that she and Harry had been there for nearly twelve hours. Funny, that it seemed longer.

Strangely enough, Faith found herself wishing Harry were with her. For all their differences, there were things that connected them together. They both had a tendency to brood. They also had moments of cruelty and selfishness, and they also had moments of kindness and self-sacrifice. In other words, they were both just a little bit fucked up.

Besides, he had interesting stories, and she didn't have to hold back with her powers. In fact, she had kind of enjoyed showing off, just as he had done. It had not been lost on her that they had each been trying to show up the other with their unique magical talents, both trying a little too hard and neither quite succeeding. She had a feeling that Harry saw her as some kind of a brute, which, in all fairness, she kind of was.

Carlos, on the other hand, was mindlessly chipper. It tended to grate on her nerves, much like the way the Scoobies had when she had first met them. Especially Willow, whose life had been just a little too Sesame Street for Faith. In theory, Willow had some sort of a supposed brush with darkness, but Faith had her doubts. It was the formative years that made you what you were; that created that golden little core of goodness that Watchers talked endlessly about. It took a lot more than the loss of a single loved one to twist that goodness into something depraved. Just as it took a lot to untwist it back. And even then, what you once were could never be quite undone. It stayed with you; an eternal imprint. A forever craving.

Faith crept through yet another dark alley, careful not to step on any detritus that might give her position away. From her vantage point she could now make out a slew of zombies milling aimlessly about. Some of them were perfectly still, giving them the appearance of being statues. But Faith was not fooled. She still remembered the jolt of surprise that ran through her when a zombie had burst out of a closet. She had been shocked into momentary stupefaction, which had given the zombie enough of an opportunity to claw at her. One of the key features in the slayer package was superb durability. She could take a direct punch from a vampire to the face and shrug it off without so much as blinking. That was why it had distinctly unnerved her that the zombie had been so readily able to slash at her flesh, leaving claw marks that it shouldn't have been able to do. They were a lot stronger than they looked. If it weren't for the fact that they were appallingly slow, they would have been a formidable enemy. The fact that Harry had been able to repel one and kill it while so injured back at the motel had taken on new meaning for her.

But there was something else that had been troubling her as well. Something that she wasn't quite ready to contemplate.

"Time to hack and slash," she said, silently readying her weapon. "Reckon there's another fifteen in the wings. I'll cut a swatch through one side and you slip around the other. We can meet up at the entrance and punch our way through."

But Carlos wasn't paying attention to her. Instead he was scouring the ground for something.

"Yo, Carlos," she whispered, snapping her fingers next to his ear. "Earth to Carlos, do you copy?"

"Yeah, yeah, found it," he muttered, kneeling and pulling a manhole cover out of its socket.

"What the hell?" she asked.

"There's a second entrance through the sewer tunnels, Carlos explained. "It takes us directly into the research facility."

"And why do we want to be going to the research facility?" Faith asked.

"There's stuff we gotta pick up," he replied, already climbing down into the tunnel. Faith had an urge to yank him back out and ask him some serious questions, but she sensed that nearby critters were starting to scope her out, and decided to clamp down on her frustrations for the moment. For the first time, she was starting to wonder why mercenaries were floating about in Raccoon City, and the conclusions she was reaching didn't give her a very comforting feeling.

"Stupid, Faith, real fucking stupid," she muttered, climbing down after him.

The sewers were a dark and unpleasant place, and it did not take them long to realize that they held creatures far more hideous than anything they had run across topside.

Faith threw herself to her knees, the muck of sewage climbing up to thigh-level as something whizzed through the air in the dark spaces above her head. Carlos fired a barrage of rounds upward, each one sparking in the blackness, temporarily blinding Faith's sensitive eyes.

"Stop that, Goddammit," she said, reaching out blindly and striking at Carlos' arm, causing him to stumble.

"Hey!" Carlos exclaimed, but Faith just slapped the water with her hand and said, "Shut the fuck up for one Goddamned second, will you?"

Something insect-like was crawling along the walls and ceiling and it had some sort of stinger. Faith lurched forward as the whip like protrusion passed by where her head had just been. Immediately, she rolled over and slashed outward to try and catch the creature where she thought its midsection would be. There was some sort of squelching noise and a spatter of blood and mucus wetted her hair, but the creature swiftly skittered out of range, and Faith felt the stinging lash of the creature's tongue on her forearm, leaving a nasty red gash and causing her to hiss and stumble backward so that she landed in the water.

"Faith," Carlos whispered. "You there?"

"Yeah?" Faith replied. "Still here." Still trying to get a fucking clue, she thought grimly before getting to her feet. soaked through in scum water and sporting multiple scrapes, Faith held her weapon out in front of her and pulled a page out of Star Wars. She closed her eyes and waited. See with your mind, she told herself before quieting her thoughts and waiting for the next round of her opponent.

In the extreme silence that settled over them, Faith cued her senses for the attack. The creature executed another slashing motion with its tongue, opting to attack from above. Faith was ready, and she managed to twirl the blade over her head with enough speed and ferocity that she severed the tongue from the creature. Something mildly acidic sprayed across her face, causing her to flinch and stumble yet again, and then, she heard the distinct, sharp whine of a creature in great agony. And under that, she heard it begin to growl.

"Oh fuck," she muttered. "I think I just made it angry."

"Come on," Carlos whispered, pulling on her shoulder and dragging her two steps before Faith followed suit. Both of them began running, as best they could through the rough terrain. Faith doubted they were making even three miles an hour in the darkness, but it didn't matter. Their survival was at stake. The creature took a moment to compose itself before skittering after them.

"Hurry," Faith whispered heatedly, glancing back and scanning for the creature, even though it was a futile gesture. The last thing she wanted was to get stabbed in the back while she was running from an enemy. It was more humiliation than her pride could take.

"Up ahead,' Carlos cried out, pointing to a red glow from an emergency light. "The code's 624."

"Gotcha," Faith bolted past him, not nearly as hampered by the darkness as Carlos, and immediately came upon the metal ladder that heralded their safety. She scaled it without a moment's thought, cringing when she heard the sound of gunfire behind her. She hit the key combination putting all her speed and strength behind it. There was the satisfying click of a door unlatching. Faith grabbed hold of the rungs with both her hands and rolled herself into a vertical handstand so that she could kick the hatch open and follow through with the rest of her body, her legs shooting through the hatch first, and then her torso so that she rocketed out of the sewer tunnel and flipped in midair to land on her feet. She drew her sword in one fluid motion from the makeshift scabbard she had at her side and glanced around, searching for danger.

Faith kicked the hatch shut and held a hand out to Carlos to help pick him up.

"You okay?" she asked.

He grimaced. "I'm alive."

"Yeah, you and me both."

"You reckon you know what to do from here?"

Carlos nodded. "Yeah, sort of."

Faith nodded. "All right. That's good enough for me. Lead the way."

Both soldiers began their slow limp towards freedom.

Unlike the executive levels of the Umbrella facility, the underground research levels were infested with all manner of carnivorous monstrosities. Moreover, these monsters came in all shapes and sizes, which meant that anyone traversing the facility had to be on constant alert for the next nightmare.

After forty-five minutes of careful navigating, Xander and Dawn had flushed out all the possible places where their friends could have been squirreled away. Between the records they had pilfered from the executive offices and their thorough search of the facility, they had to conclude that Buffy and the other slayers were not in Raccoon City.

"So now what?" Dawn said, staring down at the ground.

They were standing in a security room. It had been empty when they had arrived, though most of the security monitors were still functioning. It had been a boon in their search for their friends, because it allowed them to cover much of the facility without having to investigate each room. They also had been given an opportunity to profile several of the creatures running around, which meant that they were more or less ready for any one of them. Still, despite their incredible luck, they had turned up nothing, which had proven more discouraging than anything else.

Xander was currently trying to make heads or tails of what they had stolen from Woodyard's office. Some of it made no sense, and other pieces of information were trite or just plain wrong. What had become painfully clear, however, was that there were more research sites than just Raccoon City. The documents did not explicitly state where these other sites were, but they suggested that some were in other countries, and that there could have been as many as two dozen others. That was a lot of territory to cover, and a lot of sites to infiltrate.

The only good thing that came from it all was the acceptance that Buffy and Willow were most likely not dead. They were being experimented on, and that required them to be kept alive. And that meant that he would not give up the search.

"We've got to try and find a way out of here," Dawn said, staring out at the banks of monitors. Some sort of green ape-like creature was wrestling with a giant multi-tentacle plant. The plant seemed to be winning. One tentacle wrapped around the ape's neck and flexed its considerable muscle, snapping the bone so that the creature's head was jolted to one side. Still, however the creature fought on, gouging apart another tentacle with its claws, which in turn caused yellow pus to splash across the ape's fur. Pus that began chewing through its skin. Dawn shuddered.

In truth, Xander really had no idea how they were going to escape. They were pretty much at ground zero of a giant monster infestation. He was hungry and tired, as was Dawn, and he had sustained a number of cuts and scrapes. Dawn had a sprained ankle. He had to admit that they had been rather lucky in surviving as long as they had. The only reason they'd come so deep into monster territory was because of their firm conviction that their friends had been here. Both of them had expected, however consciously, that, when they had rescued Buffy and Willow and the others, that they themselves would have become de facto rescuees. Both of them had rested their hopes on Buffy and the others getting them out of the mess that they had gotten themselves into.

But now they were alone, and they had limited resources at their disposal. Xander wanted to simply wait in the security room, confident that they were safe, and simply hope that the city would be purged of monsters by the military. He had no desire to go back out there. Dawn, on the other hand,, wanted to simply get away as quickly and as fast as she could. In that respect, she reminded him of himself when he had been younger. Of course, she wasn't missing an eye. That one thing had given him perspective. It was easy to go out and die in a blaze of glory. Buffy had done it twice. It was another thing to go out and get maimed and then have to live with your stupidity for years afterward.

Before either of them could begin bickering over what action to take next, two things happened. Dawn had her attention drawn to the bank of security monitors, and Xander had his attention drawn to a small desk off to one side. An LED on the fax machine began blinking and, after a moment, it began spitting out paper. Xander crossed over to the machine, hoping against hope that some sort of good news would be forthcoming. After a quick survey, he realized that the machine was spitting out copies of the same page over and over again. Absently, he thought that it was a waste of paper.

He picked up a sheet and began scanning it, trying to slide past the more incomprehensible parts in his haste to get some information. By the time he made it to the bottom, the colour had drained from his face, and he wished he hadn't bothered checking at all. The document was full of code phrases that were meant for people who knew the business, but Xander was still capable of inferring the significance of what he was reading. Raccoon City was quarantined and targeted for eradication. The tactical strike would occur at 05:00.

Checking his watch, Xander saw that it was currently 03:30. They had one and a half hours to live. Xander let the paper drop from his hands. It makes no difference now, he thought sullenly. We can't escape even if we wanted to. It's not enough time to get out of the city.

"Hey, Xander, get over here and look at this."

Dawn had closed in on the monitors and was staring fixedly at two screens. Xander had an urge to make a scathing remark, but something in Dawn's expression stayed his tongue. She turned her gaze to him and said simply, "We're not alone."

Maybe they had a chance after all.

It was getting harder and harder for Faith to ignore. A roundhouse kick to the chest should have smashed the hunter's ribs, various internal organs and sent it sailing through the air. But instead, all it managed to do was crack a rib and cause the hulking ape to take a step back.

It was frustrating Faith to no end. Her powers were ebbing away, and a distinct feeling of lethargy was stealing over her. It was as though her magical powers were being drained. Carlos was just getting to his feet, a gash spilling blood across the side of his face. Two hunters had pincered them in a corridor, and if either of them had been alone, they would have been slaughtered. Instead, they had killed one and muscled their way into the control room, where the hunter had pursued them. Carlos had run out of ammunition on his magnum and had not had time to reload before the creature took a swipe at him. Faith had managed to maneuver herself between the creature and Carlos, and was now repelling it to the best of her abilities.

It should have been easy. This was the fifth hunter she had faced in Raccoon City. By now, her slayer programming should have been fed enough information to easily make minced meat out of the mutant gorillas, but that wasn't happening. She was putting in her best effort, and while she was still super strong, it wasn't the kind of strength that would leave someone like Carlos in awe of her abilities.

Faith ducked a swipe of the creature's claws and popped back up with another roundhouse. Hunters were several hundred pounds and were highly aggressive. They had the strength of a raging gorilla and could survive otherwise mortal wounds. At full strength, Faith could easily deck it with a punch that could snap its neck, but now, she dared not even try. Chances were, it would not even be fazed and would backhand her so hard she would be seeing stars. No, she had to play a defensive game and pray Carlos killed it off.

Two swift magnum rounds from her left and the creature staggered back. A wound had opened up in the side of its head, and gore was spilling out. The creature staggered drunkenly forward and collapsed face first. Faith was sweating like a bitch in heat and found herself staring at the hunter, deep in thought. Faith had been full of fear during her brutal career as a slayer. She had feared death from the master vampire that killed her watcher, Elizabeth. She had feared making friends and she had feared screwing up. She had feared disappointing Angel. And out of all that, she had finally accepted herself enough that she no longer feared any of those things. She had thought that there was, in fact, nothing left to fear. And now, with her powers ebbing away, she was being proven wrong.

Faith Lehane was terrified.

"Come on," Carlos said, breathing shallowly. The research facility was a nightmare freakhouse full of monsters of all kinds. They had learned the hard way that not even the local vegetation was your friend, when a plant tentacle had ripped Faith's sword right out of her hand and snapped it in half. But that was all right. They had arrived in the control room where they could get the necessary goods that Carlos had been instructed to get. From there, it was only a hop, skip and a jump to the chopper, whereupon they could ditch Raccoon City.

Carlos finished inputting some sort of pass code into a computer. A panel to the side slid open, revealing a series of glass vials. Quickly, Carlos began dropping the vials into individual steel tubes, that looked like cigar holders. Once he was finished with that, he began sliding each cylinder into a slot in a nearby briefcase, which, upon completion, he clicked shut and picked up. Testing its weight, he nodded to himself and turned to Faith. "All right. Let's go."

"What's that?" Faith asked, nodding in the direction of the briefcase.

Carlos shrugged. "Beats me, lady. I'm just following orders."

Faith narrowed her eyes and let Carlos walk by, content to let the issue go for the moment. there was no point getting into a fight over it now; not when she had other concerns. She had a pretty good idea that, whatever was in those vials was not the kind of thing you were going to find in a high school biology lab. Umbrella had gone to serious expense to extract those vials from this facility, and Faith wasn't prepared to simply let them walk away with it. But now was not the time. She still had her friends to find, though she was growing more and more skeptical of her ability to actually locate them. The research facility was vast, and riddled with monsters of all kinds, and something was happening to her that she couldn't quite understand. Though she had a suspicion. She hadn't really noticed it until she had dueled with Harry, and she had chalked it up to a side effect of his magic. She had seen the myriad of things he could do before, and wasn't prepared to rule anything out when it came to him. But the feeling had persisted long since past then, and it was growing worse. She was noticeably weaker. So much so that it wasn't even apparent that she was superhuman. Sure, she still had moves and strength that would impress someone, but not to the point where alarm bells would be going off in their heads. And there was no reason to expect that the decline in her powers would stop anytime soon. The only question that remained was whether it was going to leave her merely human or whether it was going to continue sapping her strength until it killed her. Though that was a bit of a false distinction, since being left merely human was practically a death sentence in Raccoon City.

The research facility was an incomprehensibly vast labyrinth to anyone who was not familiar with its internal organization. It boasted one hundred twenty-eight rooms of various sizes, spread out across three underground levels, and featuring security locks of all kinds. Some doors were electromagnetically sealed, while others sported simple padlocks. Some weren't locked at all, while others had had their locks wrenched apart. Worst of all, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the security protocols.

One thing that became clear during her trek through its many halls was that the slayers weren't there. While Faith had only managed to survey about half the facility, she had picked up too many clues to be ignored. The entire place was devoid of life. There wasn't a single human being that wasn't either a zombie or some poor, dismembered wretch. There weren't even any lab rats. All the critters had broken out of their cells. This was because virtually every cell had a backup protection in the form of an electrical barrier. Once the power fell, they were able to tear through their bars and begin wreaking havoc on the researchers. Presumably, slayers, who were the toughest of the bunch, would have been equally capable of liberating themselves during this initial onslaught. That was probably the biggest clue. Sure, the clowns at MedGen might have been able to catch ten slayers, which was no small feat, but they had done so primarily by catching them off guard. It would be a different story now.

In addition to the likelihood that the slayers would have freed themselves, Faith had not found any trace of their presence. She had taken a moment to flip through various sensitive documents as she and Carlos traversed the facility. She should have at least found something; even if it were a simple memo or some research notes. There should have been some indication in the internal administrative network that hinted at the presence of slayers. But Faith had found nothing in her scans, and it was unthinkable that they would maintain such a high level of radio silence in what was supposed to be a secure facility. The third reason that Faith believed the slayers were not in the complex was that there was no place for them. Carlos had a map of the place, and, from what she could infer between her own observations of the facility and from the map, there was no infrastructure set up for dealing with slayers, probing them, testing them, detaining them. The facility was designed to house microbiological specimens only.

That inescapable conclusion left Faith feeling uneasy. Where were her slayer sisters?

"So where exactly does one hide a helicopter in this place, soldier boy?"

"On the opposite side of the complex, the facility opens onto a ravine. A courtyard has been carved out, and that's where the chopper is. We just have to get to the far end of this final corridor, head down half another lane and then move up to the first level. From there, we should come onto a storage room that feeds into the courtyard. The chopper is boxed in on all four sides by bunkers that contain supplies of various types. I've been told that they shouldn't be compromised."

Faith nodded. Once they had made it past the control room, there had been surprisingly few critters. She supposed it made sense that they wouldn't have expanded to flush out all corners of the complex. There would be no point going to the periphery when the meet was bound to come in through the center.

She had to admit that she was going to be glad to escape Raccoon City once and for all. She did not relish spending any more time in the freak show than she had already. It was too John Carpenter for her tastes. She and Carlos made it to the bunkers without resistance. The room was dank and unused, which she supposed made sense. From what she understood, the chopper was more of a precaution borne out of military necessity than part of some operation parameter. Basically, it was designed for emergency purposes.

"I heard the neighbouring bunker's got an experimental rail cannon in it," Carlos commented.

"Yeah, why would they need something like that?" Faith asked.

"Probably to kill giant monsters."

Faith shrugged. "That's as good a reason as any, I guess."

The courtyard was less of a courtyard and more of a concrete slab. A dirty and dusty concrete slab. A McDonald's cheeseburger wrapper was plastered to the side of an overflowing garbage can in one corner. It seemed strangely out of place given the solitude evinced by the lone helicopter standing at the center.

But that's not what caught her attention. Some creepy looking bald guy was inspecting the engine. He stood slowly, and turned to greet them.

"Hello, Carlos," he said, almost cheerfully, in what Faith guessed was a Russian accent.

"Sir!" Carlos exclaimed. "You're alive!" Carlos proceeded to jog up to Nicolai, Faith reluctantly following.

"Indeed, I am, Carlos."

Faith couldn't help but notice that his gaze flickered to the case of vials that Carlos held in one hand. He's one of the fuckers in charge of this place, Faith thought, schooling her expression into one of neutrality. Nicolai then turned his attention to her. "And, you have brought a friend."

"Yeah, well, I couldn't just let her stay here," Carlos explained, gesticulating needlessly with his gun hand. "Besides, she's pretty good in a fight." And then, he added, "For a lady."

"Come then," Nicolai said, waving Carlos over. "It is important that we depart from this place as swiftly as possible. I have just been inspecting the craft, and it is in functioning order. I need only have waited for you."

"Sir, Mikhail-?"

"Is dead," Nicolai responded. "He did not survive an encounter with the beast."

Carlos hung his head in mourning for a moment before recomposing himself. "He was a good soldier."

"That he was," Nicolai responded, nodding to Carlos. "Come now. We must hurry."

Carlos proceeded to shake his head. "We can't go just yet, sir. There's others coming." Carlos checked his watch. "There's a civilian named Jill. I told her the chopper would remain until at least 4:30a.m. We need to wait. It's only a half hour. She's a police officer, and she seemed quite capable of getting here. It wouldn't be right to leave without giving her a chance."

Nicolai nodded, a thoughtful expression gracing his features. "4:30, you say?"

Carlos nodded. "Yes, sir."

Nicolai then shook his head. "I am afraid we cannot risk it. The entire city is scheduled to be eradicated at approximately 4:30. If we waited for your friend, we would not ourselves survive."

All the colour seemed to drain from Carlos' face. "Sir?"

"I am afraid we will have to go regardless," Nicolai affirmed. "The entire city is overrun by soulless abominations. We cannot chance the possibility that these creatures might escape into the wilderness and begin infecting civilians in neighbouring cities. The consequences would be disastrous."

After a moment's contemplation, Carlos nodded. "I understand."

"Hold up a sec," Faith said, raising one hand to make sure she was getting their attention. "This place is being bombed at 4:30?"

Nicolai fixed his gaze on her, and Faith got the sense that she were being appraised, the way a master vampire would appraise a slayer before a fight. Still, she ploughed on, ignoring the sensation for the moment. "And we've got a chopper that's fully functional, yeah? So, it's gotta have a radio, yeah? Why don't we just fly up, radio whoever you need to radio and have the bombs delayed. You know, a half hour. What difference does it make?"

Carlos smiled. "Yeah!" he exclaimed, punching the air enthusiastically. "That's brilliant, Faith. We should have no troubles radioing-"

Nicolai pulled out a .357 Smith & Wesson and put a bullet through Carlos' chest. Carlos was still grinning like an enthusiastic child for a full two seconds before his expression transformed into one of confusion, even as he staggered back, his brows knitted together as he gazed down at the bullet wound. The first thing he thought when he realized he'd been shot, even as shock was spreading outward through his system like an infection, was that the wound was surprisingly painless. It felt like somebody was pressing an icepack to his chest, and he supposed that it was the numbness setting in. Slowly though, it was being replaced by a burning sensation that was radiating out from the wound. He looked up at Nicolai's expression and saw that it had not changed. "Sir?"

It would take Carlos three minutes to lose consciousness and another five to experience brain death, but for all intents and purposes, he was already dead. He simply hadn't quite figured it out yet. Carlos staggered backward two steps, reached his arm out as if to pluck something from midair and then, as if having secured whatever imaginary object he was seeing, he proceeded to collapse in a heap on the ground.

Faith didn't need to be told twice that she was number two on Nicolai's hit list. While life as a slayer inured Faith to brutality, she was still shocked by the suddenness of the assault. Fortunately, Faith wasn't exactly the one in charge. Having recognized a major threat, Faith's slayer half took control and plunged her into action, simultaneously driving her to effectuate superhuman stunts to cross the four feet between her and her opponent and to undergo a full-blown tactical analysis of the situation. Nicolai was a trained professional, and Nicolai was armed. He needed to be culled and neutralized immediately.

Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Faith's slayer sense was having trouble factoring in her reduced combat effectiveness into its calculations. It understood broken bones, flesh wounds and even combat fatigue, but it did not understand how to incorporate the idea that it had lost its abilities.

Faith leapt forward and executed a sweep kick designed specifically to keep her profile low and compact and out of the way of a stray bullet, while simultaneously knocking Nicolai off his feet, discombobulating him and jarring the gun from his hand. It was nice in theory, but it left a little to be desired.

"Now, now, Ms. Lehane, is that any way to treat a Colonel?" Nicolai asked, slamming his foot down on Faith's leg as she was administering the kick. He did not have quite enough strength to overcome her speed and inertia, and found himself stumbling to one side, even as Faith was trying to recover from his parry.

Faith had banked on being able to knock Nicolai squarely off his feet with her sweep kick, but it did not happen. She also hadn't taken into account the fact that her speed had been reduced sufficiently so that Nicolai had been able to stall her kick somewhat, which had shifted her balance enough that it would take her a full quarter of a second to pop back up to a standing position, at which point she would still be, at best, two and a half feet from her target. Those were terrible odds. A veteran soldier needed no more than half a second to level and fire a gun with reasonable aim. That meant that she would have to anticipate the trajectory of the bullet with only a tenth of a second warning time, dodge it and bring herself within range of her target and neutralize him before he could fire a second shot.

Those were not good odds. Already, her slayer sense had interpreted all the tactical data at its disposal and had generated an alternative scenario that would yield a slightly higher probability of success. Switching from an offensive to a defensive game, Faith maximized the shift in her balance from Nicolai's parry so that she executed a partial somersault, partial cartwheel right over Carlos' still bleeding body, keeping her center of gravity low and her momentum high, so that she could grab Carlos by the torso and roll him into a position as she sprang to her feet that would allow her to use him as a human shield. She completed the maneuver within the requisite half second, so that, when Nicolai fired a round in her direction, all he managed to hit was Carlos' shoulder, causing the still dying soldier's socket joint to implode as the bullet tore through bone and sinew. Carlos began to drool mucus.

"Come now, Faith," Nicolai said, and then, as an afterthought, added, "May I call you Faith?"

"Go to hell," Faith replied, gently easing the magnum from Carlos' belt. Faith was currently cursing herself for her weakness. The magnum was holstered to Carlos' belt and was angled in such a way so that it was readily accessible from the front. Faith had, when she picked up Carlos' body, had the option of orienting him so that he faced either her or Nicolai. Not wanting to get herself coated in his blood, she had opted to orient him so that he was facing away from her. Unfortunately, this put the magnum in plain view of Nicolai, and it also meant that she would have to reach over and pull the gun from his belt in a way that would make it obvious to Nicolai what she was doing.

"You must have many questions for me, Faith," Nicolai said. "Don't you care to know where your friends are?"

"Like you'd tell me," she replied.

"I have nothing against telling you," he went on in a falsely magnanimous voice. "I am certain that you are completely and utterly incapable of liberating them. Ms. Summers has tried on no less than nine occasions. I admit we had not expected them to put up such fierce resistance, nor had we been entirely prepared for the magnitude of their abilities. Of your abilities, in fact."

Almost, almost, almost, Faith thought, chanting to herself like it were a mantra. Nicolai was moving to one side, and Faith was pulling Carlos' body away, exposing part of her shoulder but also obscuring the side that had the gun. Why do villains always feel the need to talk endlessly? she mused.

"But now we are, Faith," Nicolai said. "We are prepared one hundred percent to arrest, detain and use you. And use you we shall."

"Not in a million years fucker," she said, easing the gun out of its holster.

"But we already have. Do you not feel it? I know you do. The others have complained of the symptoms. Do you not feel the lethargy stealing over you? Dulling your senses, your strength, your speed. Stripping you of those wondrous powers that have always made you special. Do you not feel yourself returning to that tiny little girl you once were? Weak and afraid and unable to escape the regime of your father?"

Nicolai's words froze Faith in her tracks. Her slayer sense was screaming for her to take action but she found she could not. Nicolai was bringing to light some very uncomfortable thoughts and emotions that had lain dormant for so long, and which her growing impairment was crystallizing. He was tempting her with answers, and she knew he was doing it to trap her, but she found herself falling under its spell regardless. She needed to know what was happening, because, if she couldn't reverse it, she wasn't sure her life was worth living. There were very few things in the world she would fight for, and retaining her powers was one of them. Apart from having a purpose to her existence, her powers had given her the ability to crawl out of the destitution that had mired her childhood years. In her mind, losing her powers was akin to returning to the filth she had dragged herself out of so long ago. She would not return there.

"What about it?" Faith asked, her entire body coiled like a spring from the tension.

"Come with me, Faith, and I will show you. I will show you the greater picture; the world that we at Umbrella are creating. You can be a part of that. We are ridding the world of the scum that infests the dark places in our cities. You of all people can appreciate that. I know you can. Join us."

"Uh-huh," Faith said. Like I'm going to fall for that shit, she thought, whipping the gun from the holster all the way and whirling around to fire a shot.

That's when everything went to hell for Faith Lehane.

Nicolai's bullet to Carlos' shoulder cut the idealistic soldier's life by thirty vital seconds. Carlos, who had been infected by the t-virus back at the control room, when he had extracted the test tubes. It takes approximately four minutes from brain death to resurrection. Those four minutes had just passed. Faith had been so focused on the magnum and on Nicolai's whereabouts and his words, that she hadn't noticed the greying of Carlos' skin, the tightening and relaxing of his various muscles.

Carlos came alive in Faith's hands such that he wrenched himself free of her grip at precisely the moment that she pulled the trigger on the magnum. The resulting jolt to her balance sent the bullet wide, missing Nicolai by two feet.

"What the fuck?" Faith managed, taking a step back and focusing all her attention on Carlos. "Jesus, fuck me, Carlos," she breathed, wide-eyed, taking in the pallor of his skin, the stoop, the mucus, his one good eye. He snarled and lunged at her, both his arms outstretched.

Somewhere, deep in her mind, her slayer sense was going, "Aw, fuck, now you're seriously up shit creek."