Disclaimer - I own no legal rights to any of the copyrighted or trademarked elements of this Resident Evil fanfiction.

A/N - I apologize for it being so long since my last update, but life can be a crazy roller coaster ride and sometimes you get caught up and fanfictions get put on the backburner. But I'm really excited about RE8. And I'm also very intrigued that the new Netflix RE anime is going to involve President Graham. Not sure how much it will demotivate me to work on this fic when we're probably going to get a canon answer to what's become of Ashley after the events of RE4. That both makes me more excited for and more nervous about the new series. I'd hate to see them bring Ashley back just to do something terrible to our girl.

Anyway, I've spent the last couple hours rereading the entire story to figure out where I left off, cringing hard at every typo.

The first time Will Bard was offered the opportunity to meet Ashley Graham, he thought he was being teased.

His cockeyed optimism after graduating college with an English degree was soon kicked out of him. He'd marched into every nearby newspaper or magazine office he could find, portfolio of writing projects heavy in his arms, only to be told the only job opportunity that might be open for him was a paperboy route.

He had a desk drawer filled with rejection letters from trying repeatedly to get anything published as a freelancer. When he was able to receive a byline and a few dollars for some brief, local human interest pieces he submitted to the paper, he thought that was as close to a success story as he was ever going to get.

And when he was told those small snippets of local news had somehow reached the attention of the daughter of former President Graham, and he was now on the shortlist to ghostwrite her autobiography, he was pretty sure he was being lied to.

But he still showed up for the meeting.

None of the images Will had seen of Ashley could prepare him for meeting her in the flesh. Her soft features combined with the fragrance of the expensive perfume she preferred were intoxicating. She kept unbroken eye contact with him, even as she tucked her long bangs behind those elfin ears of hers, even as Will timidly accepted a steaming cup of coffee from her assistant. When the assistant left the office and closed the door behind her, it didn't feel like he and Ashley were just the only two people in the office but, as cliché as it sounded, the only two people in the entire world.

They exchanged pleasantries, and then Will began nervously rambling, admitting that at first he'd thought he'd been called to this interview by mistake. For the first time, Ashley looked away from him, lowering her head to her notes.

"You're right," she said. "I thought you were the more successful writer Will Bard. Good day to you."

Will muttered an apology and stood up to leave. When his hand touched the door handle, he heard her giggling.

"Wait," she called. "Come back. Is there even a successful writer named Will Bard?"

Will turned around.

"Not that I know of," he admitted.

"Well, if your pitch goes well, there just might be."

Will asked her what made her give him the gig several times over the future, and she gave him several answers. She'd immediately eliminated any of the candidates who she needed to give the classic "Excuse me, my eyes are up here" speech to. She'd crossed out any one who suggested she try to change her image or create a new persona.

"You were one of the few who wanted to tell my story in my voice," she told him once.

But the biggest clincher was the Las Plagas incident. Ashley had met with several men and women who she thought she could work with and who she thought could convincingly convey her own voice. But, for either her or them, talking about the most harrowing incident of her life was a deal-breaker. She was told again and again that if she refused to start her memoirs by talking about her abduction and near-death experiences at the hands of Los Illuminados, the only part of her life anyone seemed interested in, the book would flop.

And she kept insisting that she would only talk about the subject on her terms. That she would talk about how she had been living her life and overcoming the trauma with those events behind her, but that she wasn't ready to go into the extremely gory details of that ordeal, not yet.

And Will had said, "Okay."

They developed an easy-going relationship while they collaborated on telling her story. But once the book was published, he didn't think he'd see her again. He'd catch a clip of her occasionally, on talk shows or news programs, plugging the book as if she'd written it all by herself. That was the deal, after all. He was a ghostwriter. No need for him to attend the book readings and signings or do anything that would dispel the notion that Ashley had nothing better to do than put her own exploits down in words.

Then she'd asked to see him again. She was ready to talk about the strange creatures that tried to kill her during her disappearance. Kind of. When she insisted that the stories take the form of picture books for children, Will tried to object. Children weren't ready for accounts of nightmarish monsters, but adults were begging for them. And what did Will know about writing for children, anyway? But she wanted to collaborate with him again, and Will just didn't have it in him to say "No" to her.

And soon they were inseparable, Ashley dragging Will practically everywhere with her so they could bounce ideas off each other. He was her trusted chronicler and confidant.

Will couldn't help feeling like, just this once, maybe he should have insisted on taking a break and just staying home instead of accompanying her on another trip around the world. He hated to think of her having to go through all this by herself, but he also hated the thought that he was only slowing her down, like weights around her ankles.

"First my shoes," Ashley muttered. "Then my blazer. And now my favorite lipstick."

She used the tube to draw a neon red arrow pointing away from them.

"Didn't you say you owned the company that made the blazer anyway?" Will asked.

"It's the principle of the thing," Ashley said, putting the cap back on her lipstick. "There. This should help us retrace our steps so we don't get lost in this maze. The sooner we can find this ID badge for Carlos, the sooner we can get out of these scary tight spaces."

Will followed her closely, his stomach tied in knots as he continued keeping his wary eyes on the monsters behind the glass panels on both sides of them.

They rounded a corner, and Ashley drew another lipstick arrow on the ground at her feet.

The crawlspace split in two directions.

"Which way do we try first?" Ashley asked. "Or do you want to split up so we can cover more ground?"

"Hell no," Will said, speaking without even thinking, and then looked sheepishly at his feet.

Ashley began pointing at the diverging tunnels.

"Eenie-meenie . . ."

A nearby roar made them both shudder, and then Ashley just moved to the tunnel on their right, drawing another arrow on the ground.

It wasn't long before that path hit a dead end.

They were turning around when they heard a clicking and creaking noise, like something opening on its hinges, and then the sound of claws echoing off the floor of the vents. They could both see the fear in each other's face, but both knew they had no choice but to turn back the way they had come.

As they slowly walked back around the corner, they noticed the licker further back. It sat on its haunches, its head slightly tilting from side to side, but even as it faced them directly, it didn't seem to notice they were there.

Ashley and Will were stock-still for a moment, just watching it, and then Ashley leaned into Will's ear.

"Keep going," she whispered softly. "But don't make a sound."

Will tiptoed around the corner, Ashley following, drawing another arrow behind them. But as she tried to put the cap back on, the tube slipped through her sweaty palms and hit the floor, echoing through the vents.

The Licker straightened up and began to charge.

"Run!" Ashley screamed.

And they did, the Licker charging right behind them, until a panel collapsed below their feet and they plummeted.

It wasn't the most graceful landing, but at least there was a large cardboard box to break their fall. They were looking directly up at the Licker, stretching one clawed arm and shoulder through the gap in the floor of the vents, but not quite able to squeeze through itself. After what felt like ages, it pulled its arm out of the gap and scampered back through the crawlspace.

"Now I'm even angrier about wasting my lipstick on those filthy ducts."

They climbed off the box, and then Ashley shook her phone until the flashlight came back on.

Will jumped back in terror as the beam of light illuminated a pale, not-quite-human face.

Then he felt embarrassed as he realized it was the wax figure of a familiar character with a snowy white beard and a red fur coat and hat.

"What's a matter?" Ashley asked. "Claustrophobic?"

Will groaned.

"Your jokes are getting worse."

"You know you love them," Ashley said, moving the beam away from the jolly old elf to examine the other corners of the room.

There was a similar wax figure of a leprechaun, and the boxes had holidays and special events scrawled on them in permanent marker.

"Some kind of storage space for hotel decorations."

She continued to run the beam of the flashlight over the room. When she spotted a card on a lanyard on the ground, she lunged for it.

Will saw her expression turn from excitement to disappointment when she examined it.

"Just another maintenance keycard."

Then a nearby cardboard cutout of a man in a business suit, smiling above the hotel's logo and the advertising slogan "You're in for one hell of a business trip!," toppled over, and a long, gangly figure in a maintenance uniform emerged from between two unlighted Christmas trees, groaning and gnashing its teeth at them.

Ashley jumped out of the way, and one of the zombie's long, flailing limbs caught Will square in the face, knocking him back into a small box and then over onto its poured-out contents. He whimpered in pain as Ashley drew her weapon and fired at the zombie's head until it burst.

Ashley helped Will to his feet and then winced when she saw his back. He'd fallen on top of glass Christmas ornaments, and shards of the broken bulbs were sticking out of his back, blood soaking through his increasingly filthy dress shirt.

She saw a first aid kit hanging on the wall, then swore when she opened it.

"I was really hoping for some first aid spray," she said. "But some gauze to try to stop the bleeding will have to do for now."

She took a pair of tweezers from the box, plucking pieces of glass from his back as he tried to clench his teeth to hide his pain, then wrapped the gauze around his torso as far as it would go, the whole time looking and listening for any other threats that might emerge from the shadows.

"We're not going to die surrounded by tacky holiday decorations, okay?" she said, gently placing her hand on a not wounded part of his back.

She helped him through the nearest door, emerging in to a dark stairwell. Will sat down to catch his breath. He watched as Ashley pushed an abandoned toolbox beneath a nearby vent, climbing up on it to reach the grating and remove it.

"Do we have to go back in there?" Will said. "With that thing, or other things, still running around there trying to get us?"

"Afraid so. Carlos is counting on us. Come on."

"There it is," Rosita said, pointing to a door in the center of the hallway.

Then, as if on cue, the door burst open.

A woman crawled halfway out into the hall, and Jill could see the laundry machines behind her and a TV suspended from the ceiling displaying nothing but eerie static. The woman screamed as a giant bedbug crawled over her, its needle nose extending into her neck as she writhed and screamed in pain. Jill fired her sidearm at the bug, which crawled backwards into the laundry room, leaving its victim pale and drained on the floor, face twisted in a permanent grimace.

"So much for the guest laundry room," she said.

Then another door opened up across the hallway. Jill locked eyes with the man standing in the doorway. She began to call to him, then noticed the Umbrella insignia on his chest, it registering just in time for her to dodge the bullets he fired in her direction.

He disappeared back into the room as Jill and the others took cover behind a nearby vending machine. When he reemerged, he was carrying a plaster bust in his arms.

"Stop where you are!" Jill called, fixing him in her pistol sights. "Drop it!"

The man fired in her direction again, turning and running down the hall.

"Stay here!" Jill said to Rosita and Pierce, jumping out from her hiding place and running after him.

She ran through the stairway door he had thrown open, just as it was swinging shut, watching him go through the next door one floor down.

As she came out the door, he was otherwise occupied, focused on picking off the zombies gathered in the hallway.

"I said, drop it!" she repeated.

Instead, he hunched over and barreled through.

Jill fired into the undead, staggering them, then followed the Umbrella operative through the ornate front entrance of Wong's Asian Fusion restaraunt.

He waded into the decorative pond in the center of the restaurant, now overflowing and flooding the nearby tables around it. There seemed to be a huge dip, as the water was soon nearly up to his neck. With his back to the fountain in the middle, the water was up to his chest, and he raised his gun at Jill, the plaster bust still secure in his arm.

Then a fin broke the surface of the water nearby. Something enormous, shimmering orange and white, jumped up and caught him in its jaw.

"Great," Jill said, almost wanting to laugh. "Zombie koi fish. That's a new one."

"Valentine!"

She'd had her eyes on the water, looking for any giveaway of the mutated fish's position, and the voice behind her nearly made her jump out of her skin.

"I thought I told you to stay behind!" she said, turning to Pierce and Rosita.

"Those creepy bug things were coming after us," Rosita said.

Zombies were shambling from the reception area behind them, and Jill grabbed the security gate at the mouth of the restaurant and pulled it closed.

"How are we getting out of here?" Pierce asked.

"We'll figure that out in a minute," Jill said, eyes on the water again. "Right now, I've got a fish that needs gutting."

"Huh?"

The dorsal fin broke the surface of the water again, cutting a path towards them.

"Get back."

They scrambled up on to the nearest table, Jill taking aim at the exposed fin and firing until it changed course.

"Keep going."

The others jumped from table to table, Jill narrowly catching Rosita when only one foot landed right and she almost fell back into the water.

Jill noted the stripped carcasses of the other fish that hadn't successfully undergone the same transformation.

There was a guardrail separating them from drier ground. Jill watched as Pierce and Rosita cleared it. When she went to jump for it herself, something caught her ankle.

A giant, pale parasite had emerged from the koi fish's back, tentacles whipping through the air, and one of those tentacles was wrapped around her ankle. She fired at it until it let go, then jumped over and scrambled over the railing herself.

This section of tables gradually sloped up to the bar area, elevated to overlook the pond below. A zombie crawled out from underneath one of the tables, bib covered in what could be either blood or cocktail sauce. A swift kick from Jill snapped his neck, and they ran to the bar, one eye on the fish as it surfaced again and the parasite emerged from its back again, its tentacles not quite able to reach any of them.

A dead girl in the restaurant uniform rose up from behind the bar, reaching for them as Jill quickly put her down with a well-aimed head shot, then turned to fire another shot into the waiter that had wrapped his arms around Pierce's leg.

"That thing almost bit me!" Pierce said, shaking his foot out of the corpse's grip. "I thought you were supposed to be good at this!"

Jill turned to Pierce with a scowl, until indignity gave way to inspiration.

"You're going to hate this," she said to him as he tried to steady himself, "but I have an idea."

"What is . . .?"

He was interrupted by Jill putting her hand in his face, and then she gave a shove and he fell back over the railing into the water.

"What the hell?"

"Run for the door!" Jill yelled back.

Pierce got to his feet, soaking wet, and waded towards the door as fast as he could, pushing a floating "Slippery when wet" sign out of his face.

Pierce froze in place as the giant fish emerged behind him, shaking in terror. Jill aimed her pistol at the ceiling.

As the fish opened its huge jaws and Pierce shrieked at the top of his lungs, the massive chandelier plunged into the fish, sending orange goo up and down Pierce's back.

Jill jumped down over the railing and waded towards him.

"Did you just use me as bait?" Pierce said, still shaking.

"Yes," Jill replied calmly. "You're welcome for letting you be part of this."

She stood over what was left of the monstrous goldfish, peering through its jaws to find what was left of the Umbrella op. His outstretched arms were holding the bust of John Milton, as if presenting it to her.

She pried it out of the dead man's grip and then turned to Pierce and Rosita.

"Who else needs a drink?"