Disclaimer: see part 1 for disclaimer.

The More Things Change…

By Random1377

Part 9 – Unpleasant Conclusions

"Rebecca!"

Billy was the first on the scene, bursting into the room less than a minute after hearing Rebecca's desperate scream and immediately leveling his assault rifle at Carlos' back.

Damn it, he thought, rushing forward instead of pilling the trigger, might hit… her…

He slowed as he got closer to the two S.T.A.R.S. members, not because he was any less anxious to save Rebecca, but because it seemed that someone already had. Crouching down, he studied the scene, shivering all over as he kept reminding himself that Rebecca could still be dead – or worse, infected – but managing to contain his nerves as he looked at the situation from every angle.

From the left, he could see that Rebecca had hit her head on the edge of the desk and was bleeding onto the floor, though it did not seem to be a fatal wound… or rather, if it was, it was too late to save her, and if she was still alive, moving her without checking the wound first could potentially kill her.

Moving around to the right, he confirmed that the small red spot on the opposite side of Carlos' head was, in fact, a bullet hole… and that a quarter of his skull had been blown away by the round that had done him in.

Billy had seen enough of the walking dead to tell both from Carlos' eyes and his slack, gaping jaw that he had been infected, though when, he could not say. When I shot him, he thought suddenly. Damn it, he had an open wound and we killed that monster practically on top of him. We were so worried about Rebecca's back we didn't even check his shoulder… and all it takes is one drop. Son of a bitch – WE killed him!

Rolling the dead man onto his back confirmed this assessment, revealing his wound to be dry and devoid of blood as the hungry T-virus busily killed off the flesh at the entry site.

Abruptly, Billy rose to his feet, looking wildly around the room as the most obvious question flashed through his mind.

Who killed him?

"Billy what… oh my God."

Billy barely noticed as Chris came into the room, rushing immediately to Rebecca's side and hoisting her into his arms.

"Olivera?"

Nodding, Billy continued to look for the shooter. "Infected," he mumbled, "must've happened in the fight."

Chris winced, laying the woman on the table and rolling her onto her side to examine the cut on the back of her scalp. "Call the others back," he said grimly, "this cut looks shallow, but it's bleeding pretty good… let's hope none of his blood got into the wound."

"I don't think it did," Billy said softly. "First thing the virus does is stop the heart and keep the blood from moving to the brain – that's what kills you. He was dying when we left them alone, man. Besides… someone pushed him off of her as soon as he was dead."

Looking up sharply, Chris echoed, "Someone? You mean you didn't kill him?"

Billy narrowed his eyes and gave the room a final once over. "No," he said finally, "I heard her scream, and I came running… but I would have been too late. She was out like a light, so he could have taken as many chunks out of her as he wanted before I got a round off – no, someone else took him. From the hole, I'd say it was a nine that caught him. One round to the temple, pretty far away. A marksman."

Chris pulled a compress out of Rebecca's backpack, pressing it firmly against her head as he considered this. "Any of us would have stuck around," he said slowly. "Wesker, maybe?"

"Why?" Billy wondered. "He would have watched Olivera help himself to a meal."

"I don't know," Chris admitted. "Maybe to keep the game interesting? He's a sick bastard. Ahh, I'm just grasping at straws. Otherwise, I-"

Abruptly, he cut himself off, looking down to Carlos, then around the perimeter of the room. Billy followed his line of sight, but could not make heads or tails of what the other man was looking for.

"Let's go," Chris said softly, "you carry her… it would be better if she saw your face when she woke up, you know? You guys used to have a thing."

"Whoa!" Billy said. "We're just… leaving? Just like that?"

Chris shrugged. "Don't have time to stick around," he said evenly. "Olivera's down, and that sucks, but we have got to keep moving or we'll all be joining him. Look at this from a tactical point of view, Billy – we're down one gun, one set of shoulders for carrying things, and one more smile… if we don't keep going, we'll be down seven more, and that's unacceptable."

Billy averted his eyes, nodding as he crouched down and lifted Jill's bag of thieving equipment from where Carlos had set it down. "I know you're right," he said slowly, shouldering the bag and walking to where Rebecca was sprawled on the table, "but I still hate your ass for this."

"Yeah, well, that's your right," Chris mumbled, looking at the batch of medicine Rebecca had been working on. "Ruined," he whispered, scrubbing a hand through his hair. "God, we have got to hurry…"

( 0 0 0 )

The human mind is a funny thing. A blow to the head can yield such varied results as loss of memory to multiple personalities to long and short term comas. Sometimes, in the later case, the victim's mind 'pauses' at the moment of the injury, freezing all signals to muscles and vocal cords, then resuming them once the coma has come to an end as if nothing had happened.

Rebecca woke screaming, her entire body reacting to her final conscious thought of 'run!' as her legs and arms scrambled in every direction. "No!" she shrieked, her eyes wide and staring as Carlos' face loomed out of the darkness. "No, please, I-"

"Easy," a voice commanded, accompanied by strong hands capturing her wrists, "easy, Chambers… a few inches to the left and I'd be adopting."

"Billy?" Rebecca asked, blinking in confusion as the man nodded down at her and let her go. "Billy!"

Billy fell back on his ass as the woman threw her arms around his neck, sobbing into his chest as she shook from head to toe.

"Carlos!" she gasped. "C-carrier… he was-"

"We know," Billy interrupted. "He's… been taken care of."

Rebecca sobbed harder, holding him with all of her strength as he lifted her into his arms. Once she had gotten herself under control, she looked around, finding that the group was holed up in a small conference room.

"What… what floor?" she managed, blushing as she avoided meeting anyone's eyes.

"Seventh," Billy informed her with a certain sense of pride. "We've had a few scrapes, but nothing too bad."

Glancing to her left, Rebecca found that the table in the conference room was occupied by a very sick looking Claire Redfield. Her body was covered in sweat, and the patch of black scales under her eye had spread to cover a third of her cheek. Rebecca noticed with dawning horror that the young woman was rasping in her sleep, as if her throat was constricting, or, possibly… restructuring.

"How long do we have?"

Chris checked his watch in response to Rebecca's question. "Hour and a half," he replied grimly. "But that's for the game. For Claire, I don't know."

"We've rested long enough," Leon said softly, and when Rebecca looked at him, she was relieved to see that he had gotten a hold of himself. "There's medicine in the Jeep, right? Let's just get the hell out of here."

"Agreed," Chris said firmly. "Jill…" he paused, and Rebecca had the oddest feeling that he had been on the verge of saying something other than, "will find us, somehow, even if-"

As if on cue, the door to the room they were hiding in opened… and Jill stepped in.

"Made it," she panted, wiping sweat from her brow and looking back over her shoulder as the other S.T.A.R.S. gaped at her. "Man, you guys weren't easy to find! I had to get away from Wesker, sneak through floor after floor of monsters, and nearly get stuck in a heat vent to find you! Thank god you guys leave a trail of bodies wherever you go!"

Rebecca offered the woman a tentative smile, taking in the various scrapes and cuts she had gathered in her lonely journey to meet them. "That sneaksuit's worth the money we spent on it, huh?" she joked, smiling at Chris as he glanced down at his shoulder, and frowned as if someone had just told him something he did not want to hear. "Almost looks brand new."

Jill grinned, patting herself on the chest. "Saved my ass more than once out there. They really know how to-"

In the span of a heartbeat, Chris had raised his gun… and put two rounds through the middle of the blonde's forehead.

The smile froze on Jill's face, and she teetered on her feet, her right hand twitching randomly as she staggered forward two steps, her eyes wide and sightless as she let out a weak groan. Pursing his lips, Chris fired off four more rounds, sending Jill's body to the floor in a crumpled heap and nodding to himself as a soft sigh escaped her bloodied lips.

Just for good measure, he walked up to the body and emptied the remainder of his clip into the temple, ignoring the looks of horror on his teammates faces as he ejected the spent clip and popped in a fresh one.

"Come on," he said evenly. "We need to get out of here… and from now on, no more splitting up – if we need to check something out, we do it in twos, just like we have been. I don't want this to happen again."

"What?" Billy demanded. "Don't want what to happen again?"

Chris met the man's eyes. "This isn't Jill," he said simply, toeing the body with the edge of his boot. "It looks like her, it talks like her, hell, it probably smells like her… but it isn't her."

"How do you know?" Barry wanted to know. "I've known Jill as long as you have – how do you know you didn't just murder her?"

Putting a hand on Barry's shoulder, Chris murmured, "I shared her bed for five years, Barry. I know more about Jill Valentine than any man alive, and this," he lifted his chin towards the body on the floor, "isn't her."

"Then what is it?" Leon wondered, crouching by 'Jill's' body. "Is it… like that thing we fought in the elevator?"

"That's my guess," Chris said. "The other one didn't talk, but maybe it was an outdated model or something."

The others contemplated this idea, realizing all that it implied, and abruptly, everyone was looking around, frowning faintly as they surveyed their teammates, thoughts running in identical patterns.

How long was he investigating that room a couple floors back?

Did anyone SEE her get attacked by Olivera?

Any one of them could be one of those things and I wouldn't know it until it was too late…

"Hey," Chris said suddenly, pulling out his knife and laying it across his palm. "I trust each and every one of you."

So saying, he sliced his hand, opening a shallow gash and offering it out to the group.

"I have no problem with sharing my blood with any of you, or with having your blood in me. Anyone who doesn't feel the same better put a bullet through my brain, because I will not spend the next – possible the last – hour and a half of my life looking over my shoulder to see if any of you are growing fangs and getting ready to rip my guts out. In or out, kids – blood for blood… right now."

Without a word, Barry took Chris's knife, cutting his hand and slapping his palm against Chris's. "I trust you, Redfield," he said, his voice shaking a bit as their blood mingled and flowed together. "It'll probably get me killed, but I trust you."

One by one, the others followed suit, until every member of the group had a bit of the others' blood in his or her veins.

"There," Chris said decisively, wrapping a bandage around his hand. "Now if any of you is a monster… you won't have to worry about killing us, because we're all infected."

"I thought you said you trusted us," Leon said dryly.

Chris shrugged. "I do," he said simply. "So if I'm wrong, I'll die a horribly painful death, and I'll see you all in Heaven."

"Great…"

"This is good," Rebecca said suddenly. "Hey… hey everyone has gloves, right?" Everyone nodded, quickly picking up on her train of thought. "You guys swept the room for cameras and bugs, right?" she asked, waiting for Billy to nod before explaining, "Only we know about these cuts… so if we ever do get separated, we'll know to check each other's hands when we meet up."

Once everyone had their gloves on, the group moved to the door.

"Hey," Barry said suddenly. "How will we know if we meet the real Jill? She won't have a cut on her hand."

"I'll know," Chris said confidently, scooping his sister into his arms. "Trust me, I'll know."

"And if you're not with us…?"

Chris hesitated, hoisting Claire into a more comfortable position before offering Barry a wry grin and muttering, "You'll know."

( 0 0 0 )

As the troop moved through the sixth floor, Rebecca casually slid up at Billy's side. "Hey," she whispered, "I'm… something's wrong."

"Something?" Billy snorted. "Honey, there's a lot wrong in this dump."

"With Claire."

Billy frowned, nodding to Chris as he asked if the room Billy was checking was clear. "Other than the freaky virus thing eating her face?"

Rebecca wet her lips, leaning a bit closer as she said, "Claire told me that when she has an attack it starts to get really bad for her after three hours, and after six, she can't move."

"Yeah, so?"

Leaning even closer, Rebecca breathed, "We haven't been here six hours, Billy."

Billy looked startled, but Rebecca was not finished.

"I've been checking her as we moved," she explained. "We've been out of that room where the… Jill-thing was for twenty minutes, and half of Claire's face is covered now. Whatever's happening to her, it's happening faster than ever."

Considering this for a moment, Billy said, "So we have to get her out ASAP… but we knew that already – we all have to get out in, what, an hour and ten minutes now?"

Rebecca took a deep breath.

"I don't think she has an hour and ten minutes," she said bluntly. "We have to get her out in forty minutes. Something about this place… something about this place is making it worse – that's the only thing I can figure. Claire knows her infection better than anyone, and if she says six hours, she's good for six hours… but it's been less than four."

Billy took a surreptitious glance at where Claire was cradled in her brother's arms. "Do we need to take care of her…?"

Biting her lip, Rebecca nodded. "Yeah," she said, lowering her voice so it was for him alone, "in forty-five minutes, if we're not out of here, I'll do it."

"You?" Billy said, giving her a sharp look. "You're going to do it yourself?"

Rebecca looked ill. "It's not like I want to," she said awkwardly. "But the way I figure it, it's going to be a two-part job, and you'll have to do the other part." She looked him squarely in the eye. "You'll have to keep Chris off of me."

"Got it."

Looking at his bandage-wrapped hand, Billy shook his head. "And he was just talking about trust," he whispered. "God, I hate this job."

"This is the way it has to be," Rebecca said grimly, putting her hand on top of his. "We don't know what she'll become… and we can't risk finding out."

"Olivera had it right," Billy muttered. "It's time for a vacation from all this crap… only he had the timing wrong. We should have gone to Cancun instead of coming here."

Nodding, Rebecca retook his hand. "We'll have a drink in his honor," she said, giving Billy's hand a firm squeeze. "When we get there."

"Are you two coming?"

Glancing over Rebecca's shoulder, Billy found that the entire group was waiting at the door leading up to the next level. "Ready?" he whispered, keeping her hand clutched in his.

Rebecca drew her gun with her free hand.

"Ready as I'll ever be."

Together, the group moved forward, arriving on the fifth floor with a newfound urgency and determination as each of them promised him or herself that they would make it to the Jeep – and Claire's medicine – before it was too late.

Unfortunately, waiting for them on the fifth level was a nightmare unlike any they could have imagined.

To be concluded.

Notes: originally, this story was going to be much longer, but now it's all I can do to try to finish it at all. Next chapter will be the last, but it will also be the longest, since I have a few threads to tie up before I put this one to bed.

MacBeth2001 pre-read this installment because he had nothing better to do. Actually, he probably had PLENTY better to do, but I talked him into it anyway.