A/N: I finished both of these chapters in the same day, but I didn't post them at the same time so that there would be a nice space between. After re-reading some of the chapters from Perry's books, I was able to get a good lock on the dialogue as well as the constant change in perspective with the characters. Granted I was able to do this well in the past with the first part of the story, but now with more people involved I'm constantly changing points of view to add more insight from each party.

I know a lot of you are waiting for Echo Six to make another appearance, and trust me it won't be long before they do. Everything's building up for one big showdown that will turn the Umbrella Labs into a battle ground.

I don't own Resident Evil.

Chapter 32:

"There is no great genius, without a touch of madness." -Aristotle

Annette hurt all over. She sat up slowly, feeling sick from the seeming hundreds of aches and pains that yammered for her attention. Her neck and stomach hurt, she'd jammed her right wrist, both knees felt like they were swelling, but it was the sharp pain in her right side that was the worst, because she thought she might have cracked or even broken a rib.

'You horrible, horrible woman...' she thought in pain and anger. Annette leaned back, supporting her strained neck with her uninjured hand, but saw only metal and shadow; Ada Wong, the bitch from Umbrella, had apparently run away. She'd pretended not to know anything, but Annette wasn't stupid; Ada was probably already on her way to the lab or coming after her, anxious to finish her off.

'Umbrella, Umbrella did this...'

Annette crawled to her feet, using the rage to overcome the pain. She had to get out, to get to the laboratory before the spies did, but oh, she hurt so very much! The stabbing sensation in her gut was terrible, a knife sawing at her insides, and the lab seemed a million miles away.

"C-Can't let them steal his work..." she whispered to herself, staggering toward the door to the cavernous room, one arm wrapped around her burning chest and stopped, tilting her head to one side, listening.

Shots. Echoing through the chill air, coming from the adjacent dumping grounds and a second later, she heard a thundering hiss, more shots, splashing. Annette grinned, a tight, humorless grin. Perhaps she'd get to the lab first, after all.

'The bridge, lower the bridge, don't let her escape...' Tired and aching, the woman stumbled to the hydraulic's controls and activated the span's descent. The powerful hum of the bridge's motors drowned out the noises of whatever battle was being waged, the platform rotating down and locking into place with a heavy clang.

Annette pushed herself away from the wall, falling against the console by the door. She found the switches for the ventilation fan and flicked them up, still smiling grimly as the whining start-up high overhead grew into a dull roar. Ada had run into trouble in the dump, and Annette wasn't going to let her just climb back out of it; with the bridge lowered and the shaft blocked, Ms. Wong would have to fight her way through.

'Hope it's a pack of tickers, you bitch, I hope they're tearing you to pieces in there...' she thought bitterly as she turned away from the console and fell, the pain and dizziness too much, her bruised and swelling knees hitting the floor and sending fresh needles of agony through her legs...

...and the door in front of her opened. Annette raised the gun but wasn't able to aim, expending what was left of her strength just to keep from screaming in suffering and frustration.

'William, it hurts so bad, I'm sorry but I can't...' she thought weakly as two young people came through the opening, the girl with a look of wary concern on her smudged face and was dressed in cutoffs and a vest. The young man had a look of serious determination and dressed in black tactical armor and clothes.

Both of them dripping with sewer water with weapons in hand, not pointing it directly at Annette, but not pointing it away, either.

More spies...or assassins.

"Are you Ada?" the girl asked tentatively, reaching out to touch her and it was more than Annette could stand, to be touched in pity by some heartless, scheming corporate pawn.

"Get away from me!" she snarled, slapping at the girl's outstreched hand weakly. "I'm not your 'contact', and I don't have it on me. You can kill me, but you won't find it!"

X

Ethan stepped infront of Claire, Annette Birkin was unhinged as much as Irons had been. The woman looked as though she had fallen down a flight of stairs, then got run over by a car, but the look in her eyes showed how much of her once brilliant mind was clouded over with fear and the early stages of insanity.

Given the way she was shaking, and how much her aim was off with the weapon she was holding, she was in a lot of pain and didn't even possess the state of mind to shoot them. Let alone bring harm to them in general.

"Annette Birkin." he said clearly getting the attention of both women.

"Birkin?" echoed Claire, "Sherry's mother?"

The young Redfield's words had the older woman's head snapping up, eyes wide. "W-What?! Who...How do you know about Sherry?!" she demanded.

"She's lost in the sewers," the Claire said, speaking quickly, her voice tinged with desperation as she shoved her handgun into her belt, but Ethan kept his out, eyes narrowed. "Please, you have to help us find her! She was sucked into one of the drainage shafts and we don't know where to look..."

"But I told her to go to the station," Annette wailed, the physical pain all but forgotten, her heart pounding out waves of horrified disbelief. "Why is she here? It's dangerous, she'll be killed! And the G-Virus, Umbrella will find her, they'll take it, why is she here?"

The traveler's eyes narrowed at the mention of the G-Virus, fighting the urge to not strike the woman where she stood for thrusting something so dangerous and sought out by multiple parties onto her only child. Sherry didn't deserve that kind of trouble, she'd been through too much already.

Claire reached for her again, helping her up, and Annette didn't fight, too weak and terrified to fight. The young Redfield stared at her intently, looking somehow guilty and afraid and hopeful all at once. "The station was overrun, where do the drains go? Please, Annette, you have to tell us!"

Annette was silent a few moments, obviously thinking about something before her face morphed into one of undying hatred. She raised the gun, her wrist trembling, and backed away from the them. "Don't you move. Don't you follow me," she snarled, ignoring the pain, reaching back to push the door open. "I'll shoot if you try to follow me."

"You don't want to do that Annette," said Ethan, his HK5 raised, ready to shoot if he needed to. "Your daughter is in danger, and the only way for us to get her out of here safely is for you to give us the information we need."

"Shut up! Shut up and leave me alone, can't you all just leave me alone?!" She screamed while backing through the door, pushing it closed behind her. Leaving the two in the room looking at where she had went.

Claire turned to the ex-STARS, her face full of confusion and unease. "What the hell was all that about?" she asked trying to make sense of everything.

Ethan lowered his machine gun, "She's lost it, and in pain. And considering how she was acting I think she's been through hell thanks to Umbrella. Chances are that we won't be able to get through her too easily with words."

"What was she saying, about the G-Virus and Sherry with Umbrella coming after them?" asked the young Redfield.

The traveler thought hard a moment, wondering how much he could devulge to her. But she needed to know what was at stake and why Sherry was in so much danger from at least one source. "Remember when I told you about what had happened in the Arklay mountains, the missions me and the other STARS had?" Claire nodded. "It wasn't just evidence of what Umbrella was up to, we also discovered the people behind it."

"William Birkin and Albert Wesker were apprentacies to James Marcus, one of the founders of Umbrella. And they both had him killed when he was no longer useful to the company a decade ago. From what I was able to gather while I've been in the city during all of this, Birkin is a genius biochemist who picked the T-Virus apart piece by microscopic piece and was able to create a new synthesis from his discoveries. Something he called the G-Virus, which was rumored to be more powerful than T."

He saw the stunned look on Claire's face and continued, "That's what Umbrella is after, as for how Sherry's involved...I think her mother may have stashed a vial of the virus on her somewhere to keep it out of Umbrella's reach."

The news had stunned the young woman to her core. Another virus more powerful then the one that made the zombies and other mutated freaks of nature? It sounded far worse than she first believed it could possibly be.

And Sherry was caught in the middle.

"Her own mother is using her as a means to hide the G-Virus?" Claire asked sounding more angry than confused when everything settled in her thoughts. "How the hell could she do that to her own child?"

Ethan shrugged as he motioned for them to start moving again, "Don't know, and I couldn't care less about the woman. Sherry's the more important thing right now, and she's got a big target on her back. Let's head back and check on Leon before moving ahead, the three of us working together will help find her faster.."

Claire nodded seriously, taking out her Beretta as they headed back the way they had come. Traversing down the empty corridors back to the one where the officer had been resting.

Only to find the spot where he had been vacant, a small pool of blood on the floor from his wound being the only evidence that he had been there at all. "Dammit." Ethan cursed as he looked around for any sign of the other man and coming up empty. "Well, this puts a slight damper on things." he said sarcastically.

"Do you think something happened to him?" asked Claire a little worried.

Ethan shook his head, "No drag marks, shell casings, or excess blood other than what dripped from his wound. He probably woke up and headed off to find either us or that Ada woman on his own. Given that he's still injured I don't know whether to consider him brave, or stupid."

They both stood there a few moments before deciding to head back to where they encountered Annette. Hoping that their missing companions didn't run into any trouble down here.

X

She'd been floating along and then had gotten twisted somehow, and had gulped some of the horrible, chemical-tasting liquid and freaked out. 'Passed out,' she thought remembering the darkness that overcame her.

At least the noise had stopped, whatever that had been, a sound like a moving train, maybe, or a giant truck, roaring away...and now that she was more awake, she realized that she could see. Not very much, but enough to know that she was in a big room filled with water, and there was a tiny, feeble shaft of light coming down from high above.

'There has to be a way out. Somebody built this place, they had to have a way out.' Sherry thought as she swam a little farther into the big room, and kicking, she felt the toes of her shoes glance off against something hard. Something hard and flat.

Feeling stupid for not thinking of it already, she took a deep breath, lowered her legs and stood up. The water was all the way up to her shoulders, but she could stand.

The last traces of panic slipped away as she stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly, her eyes finally getting the most from the weak light and saw the ladder shape against the far wall. She was still scared, no question, but the sight of the shadowy rungs meant she'd found the way out. Sherry lifted her feet and paddled toward the ladder, proud of how she was handling herself.

No screaming, no crying. She needed to be strong, just like Ethan told her.

She reached the ladder and pulled her knees up to the bottom rung, a few inches above the surface. She got her feet beneath her and started to climb, grimacing at the thick, slimy feel of the metal bars beneath her pruned fingers.

The ladder seemed to go on forever, and when she risked a look down to see how high she'd gone, she could only see a tiny, shimmering patch of the water's lapping top where the light hit it directly. She could see the source of the light, too - a narrow slit in the ceiling, not much higher than where she was.

'Almost to the top. And if I fall, I won't get hurt. There's nothing to be scared of.' Sherry swallowed heavily, willing the thought to be true, and looked up again.

A few more rungs, and when she reached up for the next, her hand touched a bumpy metal ceiling. She felt a burst of accomplishment, pushing at it with one hand, and it didn't move. Not at all.

"Shit," she whispered, but it didn't sound annoyed, the way she'd hoped; the word sounded small and lonely, almost like a plea.

Sherry hooked an elbow through the rung she was holding, touched her pendant for luck, and tried again, really pushing this time. Straining with all of her might, she thought she felt it give, just a little, but not anywhere near enough. She lowered her hand, cursing silently this time; she was trapped.

For several minutes she didn't move, not wanting to go back down into the water, not wanting to believe that she really was stuck, but her arms were getting tired, and she didn't want to jump, either. Finally, she started down, much more slowly than she'd come up.

Each step lower was like admitting defeat.

She was perhaps a third of the way back to the water when she heard the footsteps overhead - a light thumping at first, more of a vibration than anything, but then quickly redefined into separate steps, getting louder. Then closer and getting louder still, approaching the top of the pit where she'd awakened.

Sherry gave about a second's thought to ignoring the footsteps and then scrambled up the ladder, deciding that it was worth the risk; it might not be Claire, Ethan, or even anyone who meant her well, but it could be her only chance at escape.

She started shouting before she got back to the top. "Hello! Help, can you hear me? Hello, hello!" The footsteps seemed to pause, and as she reached the ceiling again, still calling out, she hit the metal several times with her fist.

"Hello, hello, hello!" Another smack with her decidedly sore hand and suddenly she was hitting air, and a blinding light was in her face.

"Sherry! Oh, my god, sweetie, I'm so glad you're okay!"

Claire, it was Claire! Sherry couldn't see her but was nearly overwhelmed with delight at the sound of her voice. Strong, warm hands helped her up, warm, damp arms were hugging her tightly. Sherry blinked and squinted, and started to be able to make out the features of a vast room through the brilliant white haze.

Sherry looked around at the big room that Claire had pulled her into, feeling stunned amazement that she had heard her at all. The room was huge, spanned by a series of thin metal catwalks laid out in diagonals and the section of floor that she'd come out of was at the farthest corner of the darkest part of the room.

On the other side of the opening, Ethan was there tossing the cover he had removed aside on the concrete floor. Sherry released her grip on Claire and barreled into him, arms going around his waist and hugging him just as tightly as she had done the older girl

"I'm very glad you found me," Sherry said firmly, Ethan grinned, both he and Claire looking just as happy and amazed as she felt.

"We'd never give up looking for you, Sherry." said the ex-STARS as he knelt down to her height, his smile fading as he brushed wet hair out of her face. "Listen, we ran into your mother a little while ago."

Sherry's eyes widened, heart leaping in her chest, "Where?! Where is she?!" she said with her voice raising.

Ethan looked at Claire who looked troubled, "She's alive, and down here as well, but..." he trailed off not knowing how to proceed.

"Tell me, Ethan. Tell me the truth." the girl said firmly, not wanting to be lied to.

The young man sighed, "We don't know where she went, she was scared of us, Sherry. She was acting strange, not as bad as Irons had been, but she did look a bit out of it. She ran away and we came down the same path she did when we heard you calling out."

Nodding, the girl was thankful for his honesty and not treating her like a child. Though now she was a bit nervous about the state her mother was now in. "Do you think she came this way?" she asked after a bit.

"We can't be sure." said Claire, "We also ran into a cop, Leon, before running into your mother. I met him when I first got to the city, he was in one of the tunnels we had gone through after you disappeared. He was hurt, he couldn't come with us and when we doubled back to check on him he was gone."

Sherry figited a bit, "Was he dead?"

Ethan shook his head, "Missing, not dead. So we came back this way to see if we could find where your mother had gone." he paused, thinking about something before looking at her again, "Did your mother ever tell you about something called the G-Virus?"

She shook her head, "I don't think so, why?"

"Just checking something." his eyes suddenly went down to her lucky pendant, narrowing sightly in though again. "Did your mother give you this?"

Sherry nodded as she held the accessory in both hands. "Yeah, when she called me at home when things started getting bad she told me to keep with it me no matter what and head to the police station."

"Can I see it?" the ex-STARS asked kindly. She tensed, clutching the pendant like a lifeline. It may have been foolish, but the necklace had been a strong source of comfort for her, its weight reminding her of its presence as she endured the horrible nightmare that had been around her.

Seeing her reaction, Ethan gave her a gentle smile, "I'm not taking it from you, little darlin. I just want to check it out for a bit. You can even keep it on to prove I won't do something wrong."

It took a second or two, but Sherry released her death grip on the pendant and allowed him to take it into his own hands. He had helped her so much, him and Claire both, she had no reason to distrust either of them.

He looked over the overly large piece of accessory, his eyes scanning the whole thing over both sides and along the edges. Blinking, he pressed the tip of his thumb into the edge and twisted to the side.

The pendant popped open, a soft, purple glow reflecting off his eyes and face as he reached inside and removed a glass vial the size of his index finger and twice as wide. The center was clear, but there was a double-helix design inside filled with a purple substance that caused the strange glow.

Claire looked on as he closed the pendant and handed it back to Sherry, observing the vial in his hands with interest before slipping it into his hip pack. "What was that? Why was it in my pendant?" asked the girl very confused about everything.

"Something that shouldn't have been in your possession in the first place." replied Ethan as he put his hands on her shoulders, "It's not your fault it was there, that lies in someone else. But you will be in less danger now that it's not in your necklace."

Sherry blinked, confused, her mind trying to figure out why something like that was in the pendant...her mother...she froze when it all started making sense. On the phone, her mother had sounded very anxious when she told her to take the necklace and keep it safe no matter what before heading to the police station. At first she wondered why it was so important, but her mother said that it was and to trust her before cutting the call.

Now it all made sense. Her mother was trying to hide something and had used her to do so, thinking that no one would bother checking a little girl for something that was important to whatever she and her father were working on...that's all they cared about.

Tears welled up in Sherry's eyes as she glared down at the pendant, feeling more hurt than she ever had in her life as she grabbed the necklace and yanked it off before throwing it as hard as she could away from her. The sound of it clanking against the stone floor close to the other side of the room ringing out as she fought to keep herself from crying.

"Sherry?!" Claire exclaimed, shocked at what had happened. "What's wrong?"

The girl breathed deeply, clenching her eyes as a few weak sobs escaped her. She felt a pair of hands turn her around and she looked up to see Ethan's concerned gaze, "Talk to us, Sherry. What's wrong?"

Hearing the gentle tone in his voice broke the damn, in the next moment Sherry collapsed into his arms and cried. Her sobs echoing off the walls as she clung to the ex-STARS like her life depended on it. Her whole body shaking as she lost herself in her grief and heartache.

"T-T-They didn't care..." she whimpered into Ethan's armor. "It...It was always about work to them...They were never around when I needed them...missing birthdays...school events...they weren't even home when I turned twelve...I was always alone..."

Sherry hiccuped before continuing, "N-Now...instead of worrying about me...all they wanted was their stupid project to be safe...they never cared...they never cared!" she wailed as she broke down again, pouring her broken heart out to the older duo.

She felt Ethan's arms wrap around her, holding her tight to his chest before she felt another set wrap around her from behind. Claire holding her just as tightly as she spoke softly. "We'll never leave you alone." her voice wavered, on the verge of tears as well seeing Sherry in such a state. "No matter what happens, we won't leave you."

The girl hiccuped again as she curled into their embrace, feeling more safe and content with the two people she had just recently met then she ever had with her parents.

And she didn't want the feeling to stop...never wanted it to stop.

X

The factory machine lift, like the tram, was exactly where Annette had left it. The margin had surely tightened, but she was still ahead of the spies, of Ada Wong and her ragged little friends

'Lies, telling me lies like they all tell lies, as if losing William, suffering such pain and loss isn't enough' she thought bitterly as She fumbled the control key out of her torn lab coat pocket, leaning heavily against the mounted controls as she inserted the key and turned it.

Her shaking fingers touched the activation switch and a trail of lights appeared on the console, too bright even in the moon-filled darkness. Cool autumn air brushed over her aching body, a friendly, secret wind that smelled like fire and disease.

Four squealing, blaring honks sounded into the night sky, the massive elevator room telling her that it was time to go. Annette staggered up the gray and yellow steps, unable to remember what she'd been thinking about before. It was time to go, and she was so tired. How long had it been since she'd slept? She couldn't remember that, either.

'Hit my head, yes? Or just sleepy perhaps?'

She'd been exhausted before, but the relentless pain of her injuries had sent her to some delirious place that she'd never imagined could exist. Her thoughts came in spiraling, uneasy bursts of feeling that she couldn't seem to sort through, at least not to her satisfaction; she knew what had to be done.

The triggering system, the subway gate opening, the hiding in the shadows and waiting to heal, but the rest had become some strange, disjointed grouping of free association, as if she'd taken some drug that had overloaded her senses, and would only let her think a bit at a time.

It was almost over. That was something she could hold on to, one of the only constants in her muddled mind. A positive and somehow magical phrase that she could still see, no matter how blind she became.

On her way through the factory, she'd coughed and coughed and then vomited from the pain a thin and acidic string of bile that had made dark bubbles burst in front of her eyes, the darkness staying for so long that she thought she might actually lose her sight...it was almost over.

Clutching the thought like a lost love, she found the latch to the metal room and went inside. The controls, pushed. The movement and sound of movement engulfing her as she lay across one soft metal bench and closed her eyes. A few moments of rest, and it was almost over.

Annette sank into the dark, the humming motors lulling her into a deep, instant sleep. She was going down, her muscles relaxing, her aches and miseries loosening their hold, and for some endless reach of time, she found a silence...

Until a howling, terrible scream knifed into her darkness, a shriek of such fury and pain that it spoke for her heart, and she jerked back to life, panting and afraid, and then realized what had snapped her out of her dreamless sleep, and her thoughts came together, giving her one more clear and constant thing to hold on to.

It was William. William had come home, he had followed her and Umbrella would have nothing, because the thing that had been her husband had come back into the blast radius.

The scream sounded again, this time echoing away into one of the lab's many secret places as the lift went down and down.

Annette closed her eyes again, the new thought joining her lost love from before, the two of them together making her happy at last.

William has come home. It's almost over.

The third followed naturally, added as she slipped back into the silence, knowing that she had to get up too soon, to begin the final journey. When the lift stopped, she'd wake up and be ready.

Umbrella will suffer for what they've done, and everybody dies at the very end.

She smiled, and fell asleep, dreaming of William.

X

Leon finally started to feel like himself again, sitting in the control room where Ada had left him. She'd found a medkit in one of the dust-covered cabinets, along with a bottle of water; she'd only been gone for about ten minutes, but the aspirin was starting to kick in, and the water had worked wonders.

After waking up and coming back to his senses, the rookie cop had snapped back into action as best he could despite his injury. Managing to locate Ada again but found both her and himself in another fight for their lives against a giant crocodile that could have swallowed them both.

It had been a tough fight, but with a bit of quick thinking they managed to kill the giant reptile before Ada brought him to this place and fixed him up using his white t-shirt beneath his uniform as a make-shift bandage.

He sat in front of a switch-covered console, trying to piece together what had happened after the explosion in the sewers; the last thing he really remembered clearly was seeing the headless crocodile collapse, and then being overwhelmed by a light-headed weakness.

Ada had bandaged him up and then led him through tunnels...and a subway, they were on a subway for a minute or two...

... and finally to this room, where she'd told him to rest while she went to check on something. Leon had protested, reminding her that it wasn't safe, but had still been too fuzzy to do much more than sit where she'd put him. He'd never felt so helpless, or so totally dependent on another person. Once he'd gulped about half of the gallon jug of water, though, he'd started to snap out of it. Apparently, blood loss tended to dehydrate ...

'So she gave me the water and then went to check on what, exactly? And how did she know to come this way?' he thought trying to piece things together.

He'd barely been able to walk, let alone ask any questions, but even in his delirium, he'd noticed how certain she was, how she'd chosen their path with unwavering precision. How could she know? She was an art buyer from New York, how could she know anything about the sewer system of Raccoon City?

She'd helped him, she'd most probably saved his life, but he just couldn't keep believing that she was who she said she was. He wanted to know what she was doing, and he wanted to know now, and not just because she'd been keeping secrets; Claire was still somewhere in the sewers along with that guy Ethan, and if Ada knew the way out of the city...

Leon stood up slowly, holding onto the back of the chair, and took a deep breath. Still weak, but no dizziness, and his arm didn't hurt as badly either, the aspirin, perhaps. He drew his Magnum and walked to the door of the small, dusty room, promising himself that he wasn't going to accept any more vague answers or smiling brush-offs.

He opened the door and stepped out into an open-ended warehouse almost big enough to be an aircraft hangar, it was empty, decrepit, and heavily shadowed, but the brisk night air that breezed through made it almost pleasant...

... and there was Ada, stepping onto a raised platform just outside of the hangar, disappearing behind what looked like a section of a train. It was an industrial transport lift - and from the well-oiled look of the rails that ran through the warehouse, it was one part of the abandoned factory that hadn't been completely abandoned.

"Ada!" he called out, keeping his wounded arm tightly pressed to his body, Leon ran toward the lift and felt dull anger as he heard the rising thrum of the transport's engines, the heavy mechanical sound spilling out into the clear night sky. Ada was leaving, she hadn't gone to 'check' on anything...

'But she's not going anywhere until she tells me why.' he thought with conviction as he ran out into the moonlit open, hearing the door to the transport slam shut as he skirted around a control console and stepped up to the vibrating metal platform, nearly tripping on the brightly painted steps.

Before he could catch his balance, the transport started its descent; three-foot-high panels of rusty metal rose all the way around the train, containing the large platform as it slid smoothly down into the ground.

Leon grabbed for the door handle as the darkness swept up around the humming transport, the sky dwindling into a smaller and smaller starry patch overhead. The cool, pale light of the moon and stars was quickly replaced by the electric orange of the transport's mercury lamps.

He stumbled inside, and saw the startled look on Ada's face as she stood up from a bench bolted to one side, as she half-raised her Beretta and then lowered it again, and a flash of guilt, there and gone in the time it took for him to close the door.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, staring at each other as the room continued its smooth descent. Leon could almost see her working to come up with an explanation and as tired as he was, he decided that he just wasn't in the mood.

"Where are we going?" he asked, making no effort to keep the anger out of his voice.

Ada sighed and sat down again, her shoulders sagging. "I think it's the way out," she said quietly. She looked up at him, her dark gaze searching his. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to leave without you, but I was afraid..."

He could hear real sorrow in her voice, see it in her eyes, and felt his anger give a little. "Afraid of what?"

"That you wouldn't make it. That you wouldn't make it, trying to keep both of us safe."

"Ada, what are you talking about?" Leon moved to the bench, sitting down beside her. She looked down at her hands, speaking softly.

"When I was looking for you, back in the sewers, I found a map," she said. "It showed what looked like some kind of an underground laboratory or factory and if the map was right, there's a tunnel that runs from there to somewhere outside of the city."

She met his gaze again, honestly distressed. "Leon, I didn't think you were in any condition to make a trip like that, like this, and I was scared that if I brought you with me, if it was a dead end or something attacked us..." she trailed off trying to make him understand.

Leon nodded slowly. She'd been trying to protect herself, and him.

"I'm sorry," she repeated. "I should have told you, I shouldn't have just left you there like that. After all you've done for me, I...I at least owed you the truth."

The guilt and shame in her eyes wasn't something that could be faked. Leon reached for her hand, ready to tell her that he understood and that he didn't blame her...

...when there was a resounding thump outside. The entire transport shook, just a slight tremble, but enough to make both of them tense.

"Probably a rough spot in the track..." Leon said, and Ada nodded, gazing at him with an intensity that made him pleasantly uncomfortable, a warmth spreading through his entire body...

BAM!

Ada flew off the bench, thrown to the floor as a massive, curled thing slammed through the wall, crashing through the sheet metal of the vehicle's side as though it were made of paper. It was a fist, a fist with bone claws, each of them nearly a foot long, the claws dripping red.

"Ada!" Leon shouted, dropping to the floor as the giant hand withdrew, its bloody talons ripping new holes in the metal wall. Grabbing Ada's limp body, pulling her into the center of the transport. A terrible shriek pealed through the moving darkness outside and it was the same furious cry that they'd heard in the station, but louder, more violent and even less human than before.

Leon held on to Ada with his one good arm, feeling the warm trickle of blood seeping out from her right side, feeling her dead weight against his heaving chest.

"Ada, wake up! Ada!"

Nothing. He lowered her gently to the floor, then pulled at the bloody hole in her dress, just above her hip. Blood was welling up from two deep punctures; there was no way to tell how bad, and he ripped at the fabric, tearing off the bottom few inches of her short dress and pressing the wadded material against the wound.

The monster screamed again, and the rage in its throaty howl was nothing to what Leon was feeling, staring down at Ada's still and closed face. He stretched her tight dress over the makeshift bandage, fixing it in place as best he could, then stood up and unstrapped the Remington shotgun he had picked up a while back.

Ada had taken care of him, had protected him when he couldn't protect himself. Leon loaded the shotgun grimly, feeling no pain at all as he prepared to return the favor.

X

It had taken a little bit of time before the trio started moving. Ethan and Claire giving Sherry all the time she needed to get herself back together before hand, both giving her as much comfort as possible to help her through it.

Neither of them knew what to say about any of it. The girl had obviously been keeping all of the pent up emotions locked away for so long that finding out what her mother had stashed on her finally broke them out. And both of them were pissed when the realized the full weight of it.

Sherry Birkin had been alone most of her life, in a house that wasn't a home because her parents were too busy to even offer her what most children needed to feel comforted and loved. Feeling neglected whenever something important for her came up and was forgotten so easily. All they had cared about was their work for Umbrella, so much so that even their child was lost in the shadow the corporation cast.

It made Ethan hate them both on a whole new level, nothing should ever be more important than your child. That's something he knew too well growing up when he left the orphanage back in the world he came from. His adopted parents loved him and gave him all the time they could, but Sherry...she had been forced to become 'self-sufficient' from the lack of her parents being around.

It was both sad...and pathetic. And he wouldn't make that mistake as long as Sherry was in his care. Claire had been right, they would never leave her alone.

After walking for a good amount of time, they reached what looked like the end of the line, it was Sherry who figured out where her mother must have gone. They'd walked into yet another open, shadowy room, but it only had the one door; there seemed to be no other way out of the cavernous chamber, unless Annette had jumped off the raised floor and trekked off through the unlit emptiness that surrounded them.

They stood at the edge of the darkness, trying to see down into the shadows and having no luck. The room was set up almost like a loading dock: a railed platform ran from the door along the back wall, then ended abruptly, giving way to a seemingly endless void.

Either Annette had climbed down and navigated some secret path through the dark, or maybe they had been mistaken about which way she'd gone.

"Could it be a train? This looks like a train station." said Sherry, her old self slowly coming back after the emotional breakdown she had endured.

"Your right, it does." said Ethan as he ventured over to a small computer console on the side of the platform. Giving it a once over before pressing the 'recall' command followed by the command code he was able to remember before hitting enter.

The tram's light appeared after a few seconds, the tiny circle of brightness getting bigger as he made his way back to the platform where the girls were waiting. Claire with her arm around Sherry's shoulders, smiling at her and getting one in return.

Ethan had been glade that she'd been able to get the girl smiling again. With whatever she had been through with all of this, her parents, and whatever else, it was good to see her trying to be happy. Even though he knew that she was still deeply hurt by the betrayal from her mother, she was proving to be far stronger than he first thought.

The train was close enough now for them to see its shape, a single car about twenty or twenty-five feet long riding smoothly along its overhead track.

"Where do you think it goes?" Sherry asked, and before either of the other two could answer, the door to the platform exploded. The hatch blowing inward, torn off its hinges in a squeal of metal and clanging to the floor.

Claire grabbed Sherry, pulling her close with Ethan shielding both of them as the towering T-103 Tyrant stepped into the room, bending low and sideways to squeeze through the opening, his soulless gaze turning toward them at once.

"Get behind us!" Claire shouted to the girl, pulling her handgun out and aiming it at the hulking being, Ethan doing the same with his HK5 before glancing back at the approaching train.

'Ten seconds, we need ten seconds!' he thought after calculating the speed of the transport.

But the Tyrant took a giant step toward them, and he knew they didn't have them. His bland, terrible face, expressionless, his giant right hand already rising, still twenty feet away but only four steps in his massive stride.

"Get on the train when it stops!" the ex-STARS shouted and pulled the trigger.

The machine gun chattered loudly, rounds beating into the monsters chest peppering through his long trench coat. Claire fired her own weapon, half the clip striking different points, one of which hit one dead-white cheek, but the T-103 didn't blink, didn't bleed, and didn't stop.

Another mighty step, the black, smoking pit in his face a testament to his inhumanity.

"Aim for the knees or the eyes!" Ethan called out as he reloaded his weapon and fired at the Tyrant's legs. Rounds tearing into the tree trunk sized limbs as Claire reaimed and fired as well.

The monster grunted, pausing as the bullets tore into him, at least one a direct hit to his left knee, the black eyes fixed on the traveler, marking him.

"That's it asshole, overhere!" Ethan shouted as he switched out for his magnum and fired twice, the heavy rounds striking the T-103 in the gut and making him stumble back a half step as the train finally pulled up to the platform.

Sherry screamed, and they staretd backing away, keeping the heat on until they were on the train. The young girl hitting the control for the door making it whoosh shut. The Tyrant framed in the tiny window, not coming forward anymore but still not falling. Not dying.

Ethan looked around them, spotting the board of blinking lights to the right and knowing that the door wouldn't hold for a second if the giant started walking again. "Hit the controls, get this thing moving!" he said keeping his magnum locked on the T-103's head through the glass incase it started moving toward them again.

Claire ran for the control board with Sherry at her side, thanking God that the designer had been user-friendly as the red "go" button snapped down beneath her shaking hand, and the train was moving, sliding away from the platform, away from the indestructible un-man and into the black.

When they were out of danger, the ex-STARS stepped away from the sealed door and leaned heavily on the wall behind him. Letting out a slow breath as he broke open the large handgun, the dull ring of five empty shell casings hitting the floor heard over the trams engine as he removed the only round still live from the chamber.

Tucking the bullet away in a small pocket, he fished out his second to last speed loader and slipped it into place before closing the magnum up and taking out his machine gun to reload that as well.

Only to find the weapon only had half a clip of ammo remaining in total and instead tossed it onto a nearby seat since he wouldn't need it much anymore.

At the rate they were going, hopefully they would be out of here before they ran out of bullets. Though with how things were playing out it was looking more and more like a possibility.

He'd wanted to avoid the Umbrella lab facility entirely, having plotted out a better route out of the city that would avoid all the trouble. But once again, he had been proven how fate was a cruel, cruel bitch. And now here they were on their way into the lions den with only god, and sadly he, knew what was waiting for them.

Looking back toward the front of the tram car, Ethan found Claire and Sherry sitting side by side. The girl's head resting on Claire's shoulder as they both tried to fight off sleep.

He couldn't blame them, the last time he had gotten any rest felt like forever, exhaustion starting to creep up on him as well as he moved over to the seats across from them and sat down. Magnum still in hand as he got comfortable and leaned his back against the humming wall, eyes drifting closed as he let his body rest for the time being.

And mentally preparing for the next wave that they were currently heading toward.

X

Annette sat in the staff bunk room on level four, waiting for the mainframe to respond to the power-up and debating whether or not to initiate the P-Epsilon sequence. Once the fail-safe system was triggered, all of the connecting corridor doors would unlock, and those doors that were electronically powered would open. The creatures that had been trapped these last days would be free to roam, and most of them would be hungry.

She didn't want to run into any unpleasantness upon her departure, but as the first lines of code spilled across the screen, she decided against running the sequence. The P-Epsilon gas was an experiment anyway, something a couple of the microbiologist techs had worked up to appease the Umbrella damage-control staff.

If it worked, it would knock out the Re3s and all of the human carriers that had been infected by the initial airborn, the first wave, ensuring her a safer trip to the escape transport tunnel; but the spies were coming, and Annette didn't want to make things easy for them.

She'd heard the lift being recalled as she'd stumbled her way to the synthesis lab, which was fine, great, they'd be just in time for the finale, and she wanted them fighting for their lives as she sped away from the facility, away from the brilliant explosion that would consume the multibillion-dollar facility...

'And it'll burn, it'll all burn and I'll be free of this nightmare. Endgame and I win. Umbrella loses, once and for all, the sneaking, murdering animal bastards.' she thought in her new state of feeling.

She felt good, awake and aware and in very little pain; she'd meant to go straight to the nearest computer outlet upon her return to activate the fail-safe even before collecting the sample, but she'd barely been able to see straight as she'd stumbled off the lift; she'd been afraid of forgetting something, or worse, of falling and being unable to get up again.

A trip to the meds locker in the synthesis lab had fixed all that; already, the terrible pain was a distant memory, along with the bizarre, deluded thought processes that had made it so hard to concentrate. When her little cocktail shot wore off, she'd pay for the temporary reprieve, but for the next couple of hours, at least, she was better, than new.

Annette knew she was high, that she shouldn't overestimate her abilities, but why shouldn't she feel happy? She grinned at the small computer in front of her and started to tap in the codes, her fingers flying over the keys, feeling like her teeth would crack as the synthetic adrenaline pounded through her dilated veins. She'd made it back to the lab, William had come back, and the sample, the very last viable G-Virus sample in the facility, was tucked into her pocket. She'd hidden it in one of the fuse cases before she'd gone looking for William, and picked it up on the way to the staff room.

76E. 43L. 17A. Fail-Safe Time: 20. Vocal warning/power cut: 10. Personal Authorization:

Birkin.

And that was it. Annette couldn't stop grinning, didn't want to stop as she lightly stroked the 'enter' key, the triumph a hot and liquid joy spinning through her numb and tattered flesh.

One touch, and there was nothing on earth that could stop it. In ten minutes, the taped warnings would start to run, and the transport lift would shut down, cutting the facility off from the surface; in fifteen, the audio would begin the countdown - five minutes to reach the minimum safe distance by train, another five and...

Boom. Twenty minutes before the explosion. More than enough time to get to the tunnel and power up the train, no matter what is set free; enough time to speed away from the ticking dock, beneath the city streets, through the isolated foothills at the outskirts of Raccoon. Enough time to get to the end of the track, walk out into the private plot of land, turn around and see Umbrella lose it all.

As the clock ticked to zero, the plastique fail-safe charges in the laboratory's central power core would be activated. Even if all but one of the twelve explosive packets failed, that one blast would be enough to set off the secondary charges that were built into the walls themselves; Umbrella's fail-safe system had been designed to take it all down. The lab would become an inferno, blasting up into the dead city, visible for miles and she'd be there to see it, to know that she'd done what she could to make things right.

'This is for you, William.'

The thought was bittersweet, for some time, they hadn't enjoyed their relationship as husband and wife. William was so brilliant, so devoted to the work, that the pleasures of synthesis and development had taken the place of the perks of married life. She had come to recognize his genius, to learn the joy of supporting him without the nuisance of relationship struggles, but now, her finger resting on the end to it all, she found herself suddenly wishing very much that there had been more between them in the last few years, more than her adoration for his incredible gifts, his appreciation of her assistance.

'This is our last kiss, my love. This is my contribution to the work, my final loving act for what we shared.' Annette thought as she pressed the key, her heart singing, and saw the locked code flash across the monitor in glowing green.

"I respectfully hand in my resignation," she said softly, and started to laugh.

A/N: Mother of the year, isn't she folks?

With the G-Virus sample now in Ethan's possession, Sherry doesn't have to worry about Mr. X coming after her. But now the target on his back just got a lot bigger, and with them getting closer to the Umbrella facility below Raccoon City it's only a matter of time before all of his good intentions catch up with him. Needless to say, he's going to need a lot of backup...and a shit-load of luck...

Leave your reviews at the door, and I'll see you all soon enough!