A/n's: Here it is, at long last. Fingers crossed that it's not too far below ya'lls' expectations.

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter and offered such wonderful support, and, of course, thank you to Twin for always being there when I needed you.

Warnings: Some gore.

Disclaimer: The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is a real place, and the U.S. Government is really looking to sell it, but I promise I have no affiliation with them and am not earning any profit in using it in this story. It just made for a handy, and fun, plot device.

Chapter Six

The Wheel of Fortune

"The Wheel of Fortune is an apt symbol for the forces of Destiny and Fate, and its appearance means that change is not only likely to happen, it is certain to happen, and soon. The nature of the change is likely to be dramatic and certainly out of your control, but remember that every path leads somewhere, even if you don't know where it is."

-Thirteen, Aeclectic Tarot

-Ata-Tarot

Everything was quiet and dark. The Mill turned in for the night and everyone far away asleep.

Everyone except Sarah.

On quick little feet she tip-toed from her room, the sleepy snores and murmuring sighs of the others following her as she slipped down the hall. Dancing around the loose, squeaky floorboard across from Mr. Bill's room, she hurried to the door at the very end.

It was closed now. Had been ever since he'd come, but she paused only a few uncertain moments before letting herself in. The door opened and closed with barely a sound and she smiled, already feeling better…

Then she heard it - that rustling noise of bad things moving out of sight – and then she saw… him. In the corner, upright – watching – with those snake eyes glowing red like… like… blood.

Heart pounding, she froze – except for her shaking knees and her eyes, which darted to the opposite corner. To the mound of blankets and pillows, to the form sleeping unaware.

Safety.

She'd never seen him in the dark before. Never been alone with him. She never had any reason to be afraid…. But now she wondered.

Could she make it…? Would he… stop her?

Would he do those things Daryl hissed about when he thought no one was listening?

Sarah pulled her lip with her teeth and glanced at the bed again.

What would she do?

She glanced back at Wesker – still watching (waiting?) – and took a step. Just a little one. A test.

He didn't move.

She took another. Then another… and suddenly gave in, sprinting the rest of the way and diving down into the nest.

There was a grunt of pain, and Sarah grabbed in the direction it had come from, pulling and shaking.

"What…" came a voice, heavy with sleep. "Sarah? What – what is it?"

"I…" Sarah paused. Willed herself not to look up. "I couldn't sleep."

A stretch of silence, then a tired sigh. "Okay. Alright." She shifted, making room. "But if you steal all my covers again I'll make you sleep with Spade."

"What about…" Sarah swallowed, and dropped her voice to an insistent whisper, "…him? Is it – okay?"

She didn't move. Didn't even look up, she was already falling under again. Comfortable. Unafraid. "He's watching over us, Sarah. Go to sleep… he'll keep us safe."

~.~

He had seen it hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times in a sea of faces: men and women and children, screaming and bleeding, burning from the inside as T made them her own. He knew the symptoms, understood the process – could quote it back to himself in several languages.

He'd even lived it.

But somehow, it was still new.

It was different this time.

Because of her; because it was her.

It was her turning the white and grey afternoon to red as she lurched in her seat beside him and vomited blood. It was the sound of her panting and gasping, of her heart laboring in his ears, as he slammed on the brakes and jammed the car into park. The feel of her body writhing, twisting and contorting, as he dragged her from her seat and onto the snow dusted asphalt. It was the way she looked up at him, the veins in her eyes blown into ruby starbursts, and smiled with pink-tinted teeth.

The gurgle in her lungs…. The stuttering whisper of her voice….

The silence.

The deafening void as she slipped away and left him alone with nothing but the promise of the virus that she would be back.

~.~

He wiped her mouth, but the ruby tinge remained.

He rubbed down the inside of the car with a towel he found in the trunk, but the scent lingered.

(Bile and blood and death – a noxious cloud that flooded his senses.)

In the passenger seat, her body rested, slumped, forehead pressed to the glass that had been splattered with her fluids.

He turned the CD back on, but he could still hear the lack of her heartbeat, the absence of breath.

~.~

The end of the line was Long Island Sound; an expanse of water and waves and a briny wind that chased the lingering scent of blood and vomit from his lungs as he stared across and out into the distance.

On the horizon, shimmering like mirage, sat Plum Island, vague and dark.

"The facility there is owned by Umbrella," he told her, voice hollow on the brisk and salty breeze. "But it was closed before the end – too much expense to correct all the decades of government mistakes, not enough profit to make it worth while."

A rush of phantom heat tickled down the back of his collar.

Oh good, more boats.

"We will regroup there. We will be able to wait undisturbed."

Her ghostlike laugh whispered in his ear.

My last cruise ended so well.

~.~

The old ferry left a lot to be desired, but it floated, and the engine, after so many years of neglect and disuse, miraculously still had enough life left to come alive with an angry roar of grinding gears and roiling sea.

Can I call you 'captain?'

It was the sly, amused tone that had him looking back over his shoulder to where she sat in the corner, leaning against the grimy wall.

(Lifeless. Her lips still stained with the red of her blood. Her eyes half-open and as blank as glass.)

What? I'd bet you like it.

He snorted – a hard, forceful exhale – and turned back to the instrument panel.

Spoil-sport.

He reached for the throttle and-

-Oh, look! We have company.

He turned back, hand going for the desert eagle snug against his side as a crash wafted up from somewhere below the wheelhouse.

A thought - a breath - and he was across the room, peering through the porthole, looking left, right… then down, down to the deck where an infected thrashed – struggling to find its feet on the shifting vessel.

He'd checked the ferry. It must have come from the dockyard, drawn by the noise of the engine and the churn of the propeller.

Its cataract white eyes rolled stupidly, searching… a pound of flesh falling to the deck as it lurched upright. Its head turned, what remained of its nose leading its lizard brain.

They're gazes met.

Wesker's lip curled in a silent display of teeth.

And it lost interest, head drooping like a wilted flower.

An understanding.

Like to like.

~.~

Halfway across the Sound it lost its footing, slipped, and tumbled overboard.

Out the window all Wesker saw was a flash of white - the sea rising up - as it crashed over the side and disappeared into the blue-black waves.

I'll take that ten bucks now.

"It's not technically dead. They don't breathe, it can't drown. It will drift – until it finds the shore or disintegrates."

There was a stretch of considering silence.

And here I thought just being one of them was the worst that could happen.

~.~

The woodland, culled back during Umbrella's tenure at the island, had grown wild in the years since the end. It skirted the beach, stretching thick beyond the open expanse of Plum's dockyard and chasing the cracked road to the facility up and out of sight.

A few years more and it would be impossible to tell man had ever been there.

Limp in his arms, her head rolled into the curve of his neck as they strode up the old path.

"Deer," he provided, before her voice whispered. "Some wild dog. The former has always been here, the latter introduced."

Escaped, you mean.

"Before Umbrella, when it was still the Plum Island Animal Disease Center."

Because that's so much more comforting.

"They're harmless."

To you.

"To us."

~.~

The facility was sprawling, as much a maze of twists and turns above ground as beneath, but he remembered. The power had long been disconnected, but it didn't matter.

He could see.

Through the long halls and quiet rooms so haunted he could hear the echo of ancient footsteps and hissed voices, he carried her, seeking somewhere safe. Somewhere suitable….

He settled for a breakroom, still stocked with a tattered couch and a wobbly table with one leg longer than the others.

There he stripped her, and cleaned her – bathing away as much of what had been as was possible – and laid her down to rest, arranging her limbs until it appeared she was sleeping.

(An altar for the phoenix.)

How long he'd have to wait, only the virus knew.

~.~

We sat together at the end of the dock, my father and I, the rough cut wood biting into the backs of my bare legs as the sun beat down on us. In the distance a fish slapped at the surface… and beside me, my father dug noisily into the paper bag between us. He pulled out a white bundle – a hamburger wrapped in white and sporting a pair of golden arches above a leering red grin.

"You have no reason to be afraid, you know," he said suddenly, smoothing the crinkled wrapper across his lap as he unfolded it.

I stared down at the blue-green water, watching the light dance over the gentle waves smacking against the support posts of the dock. "I'm not."

He said nothing. Only chewed.

"Not really."

"Then why are you here? You know you don't belong. Not yet."

"I… I wanted you to know that I'm sorry the way it happened. And that I wish it could have been different."

More quiet chewing. "You don't regret it, though."

It wasn't a question.

My mouth opened – closed.

"No," I finally agreed.

Even if I'd wanted to lie, I didn't think I could've. This, somehow I knew, wasn't the place for it.

This… this was my last chance.

"I'll never see you again," I heard myself whisper. Guilt. "Or the others, they'll never forgive-"

"Never's a long time, Mooch," he interrupted, untroubled and suddenly smiling. Just like his hamburger wrapper. "A lot can happen between here and eternity."

I started to ask what he meant – but he waved me off, popping the rest of his burger into his mouth with one hand and scraping once more inside the bag between us with the other.

"Now… in the mean time…" He unrolled the second and pushed aside the sesame seed speckled bun, plucking out a thin, round pickle, and holding it out to me as the wiry whiskers around his mouth pulled impossibly upwards. "I remember how much your mother craved them."

~.~

Heat. Pooling… sliding… slipping around inside.

Somewhere – a pounding. Drumming, drumming… hard and rhythmic.

And… pickles.

The bitter tang of pickles in the back of my mouth.

~.~

A hushed noise. From behind, somewhere out in the darkness.

Wesker stiffened and let his fingers shift to the Desert Eagle beside his hand as he turned… and saw her. Wraith-like, she wavered in the doorway, her skin bare and pale and glowing a deathly blue in the uncertain moonlight filtering in through the broken glass of a nearby window.

She did nothing – said nothing – and for a moment he wondered if perhaps his delusions had escalated. No longer just auditory hallucinations, but visual as well….

But then she grinned, a lazy display of teeth, and her eyes, her strange new serpentine eyes the color of rubies and gold gleamed as the rush of her heartbeat echoed in his ears. "Did you miss me?"

~.~

"Keep it." A smile. A warm hand. "You're our girl scout extraordinaire, who could be better than you?"

A series of clicks, rapid and desperate. Then… a soft, low sigh followed by the gentle snap of metal on metal.

Finality.

It hadn't worked in months, but Sarah never stopped trying, coming back to it again and again to rub the cool metal like a worry stone.

One more time, her fingers would say, scratching over the little nicks and scars, and like an itch, the idea would dig at her until she gave in. Until she believed it would all be different.

One more chance.

But no… she never got more than a few futile sparks. It was gone.

Just like everything else.

Just like her.