Warning: this fic contains blood, injury, gore, violence, and death.

It all happened in a matter of seconds. One moment, they thought they were finally in the clear. The next, the sharp claws of that skinless monster were tearing a hole into the wall of the train, Rain was sliding her handgun back over to Alice, and Matt was yelling, "Get us the fuck out of here!" towards the cabin where Kaplan was seated.

Rain couldn't recall what happened right after that. She had been in and out of it since their nightmare of a trip through the service tunnels, and for a second time in the past few minutes, she went from teetering on the edge of consciousness to taking a sheer drop into nothingness.

It felt like nothing but a blink. Kind of similar to the feeling you get when you nod off unexpectedly, only to wake up and come to find that hours have passed. Except that the brief feeling of confusion which would typically accompany that never came, because the exact moment that awareness flooded back into Rain, lightning struck her body.

Her nerves were on fire. She couldn't scream, though. Couldn't move aside from the uncontrolled twitching of her extremities, which soon turned into full-on violent spasming of the muscles in her arms and legs. Her heart pounded erratically against her ribcage.

Chaos continued to unfold on the train. Gunshots, shouting, banging, screeching... but it sounded like it was all a thousand miles away.

Until it didn't.

The blaze beneath her skin suddenly began to die down, becoming a significantly more tolerable mild burning sensation. The feeling of touching your junky, too-hot radiator with your bare skin, but internal and all throughout.

A cacophonous series of metallic clangs filled the air as heavy steel rods spilled into the car.

Rain's senses, which had been growing progressively worse during the last few hours, were suddenly clearer than ever.

She could see the individual sparks being spat from the damaged wiring, the slobber spilling from the maw of the monster, and the sweat glistening on Alice and Matt's panic-stricken forms.

The taste of blood in her mouth demanded—no, screamed for her attention.

A loud shriek rang out. Ear-piercingly loud. She could feel it in her bones.

Then, there was the smell. It was metallic. Following the cry, it grew even more powerful. It was intoxicating.

"Open the doors!" Alice pleaded.

Rain slowly unfolded herself from the ball she was curled up in—she couldn't recall putting herself in that position, or how she ended up in a corner. The noise that left her lips as she staggered to her feet did not sound like her own voice. It was a raspy, rattling noise that hardly seemed human at all.

Matt spun around to hit the button for the maintenance doors, only to find her standing directly in the way. He froze up, staring like a deer caught in headlights, staring like she was one of those soulless things wandering the Hive.

But she wasn't.

She lunged. The movement was not done of her own volition.

Rain wasn't one of those undead freaks. Her heart was still beating in her chest, albeit slowly. She was still aware. Something wasn't right. Something wasn't right, why was she still aware why could she still see why could she see herself digging her nails into Matt's shoulders and desperately trying to clamp down on his neck and tear into his flesh—

"Crap!" he sputtered out, struggling against her.

She needed to tear him open.

Needed to rip him apart.

There was an unignorable itch taking over, a primal urge to expose the muscle beneath,

The nerves,

The bones,

She needed more of his blood to spill, even if her brain was screaming at her to fucking stop.

Past his shoulder, she caught a proper glimpse of Alice on the floor with a white-knuckled grip on one of those metal rods, a horrified look on her face.

Briefly, Rain locked up.

Matt finally managed to shove her away. Her back roughly hit the wall, but she couldn't feel the impact. Her first instinct was to close the distance once more.

But she didn't

"Open the doors!"

Matt trained the barrel of her gun on her head.

She crumpled in on herself, fighting against the itch with every fiber of her being. This wasn't her. She refused to let it be her.

"Open the doors!"

She fought, and fought, and fought until something snapped, until the bloodstained strings broke, until she managed to push her own thoughts back into the forefront of her mind.

With a single sharp movement that made Matt tighten his finger on the trigger, Rain brought her hand up and smacked the button.

The set of doors on the floor opened up.

The monster fell onto the tracks below, still pinned by the metal rod Alice had stuck through its lance-like tongue. Sparks began to fly and soon after, the insanely high friction caused the monster's body to erupt into flames.

Rain hit the button a second time, closing the doors and severing the tongue. She made an effort to stop breathing through her nose when fresh blood spurted onto the floor. She slumped back against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting. The gun never stopped following her.

A tense silence followed.

"...Rain?" Matt questioned hesitantly.

"What?" she managed.

Upon receiving a verbal response, he lowered the gun. She wished he wouldn't.

Alice began to approach. She had that look in her eyes. The same one that was there moments before that fucking thing forced its way into the train. When Rain had assured her "I'm not dead yet."

"Stay back. I don't... I don't know what I'll do." Rip her apart. Kill them both. "Just—just get rid of me before I try something else stupid."

Alice didn't move. Neither did Matt.

"Just do it!"

"But you're not—" Alice began.

Bite. Rip. Kill.

"I am!"

"Are you?" Matt asked.

"...I don't know..." The itch began to die down, becoming nothing but a whisper. "I don't know what the fuck's happening to me..."

Matt turned to Alice as if she could possibly provide some sort of explanation since she had more knowledge about the antivirus than he or Rain did. She didn't seem to have one.

"We aren't leaving without you. We're so close, and if you were too far gone, you wouldn't be speaking to us at all right now."

Rain had met Alice once before all this. Well. She had met Chief Abernathy. That was how they were meant to address her during that meeting. This woman, even if she had regained a decent amount of memory since the Red Queen released that nerve gas into the mansion, still had a face that was... far too open to belong to Chief Abernathy.

"We'll figure things out properly when we're back through the doors, okay? We only have a few minutes left."

Alice tossed Rain's wristwatch back over to her. She caught it with ease. A little more than two minutes were left on the counter.

Chief Abernathy, even if she did find herself caring for Rain in some capacity during all of this, would not be gazing at her with a borderline pleading look in her light eyes. She probably wouldn't be so optimistic after what Rain just tried, either. But...

"Fine." She grabbed ahold of some piping on the wall and tried to pull herself back up. When Matt tried to help her like he did earlier, she pulled away from his touch. "Fine, but if I lose control again..."

He nodded his head in understanding.

The train came to a slow stop.

Rain got off first. If she walked ahead of them, it would be easier for them to take her out if they needed to.

"Hey, is Kaplan gonna get his ass out here, or what?"

Both Matt and Alice were quiet. Alice had that same avoidant expression she had when arriving back from the Red Queen's chamber without One, Vance, Warner, and Olga.

'Christ... Him too?' Whatever happened to him, it must have happened while Rain was passed out on the floor. 'Poor bastard.'

There was no more time to waste, though. They now only had a minute and a half before the doors closed.

They hurried down the platform.

Less than a minute remained.

They ran up the staircase, the doors beginning to close as they finally passed the threshold to safety.

Then, it was back through the mirror entrance of the Hive and into the mansion.

Rain decided to just keep her mouth shut for the time being, even when Alice and Matt started talking.

That is until she started hearing Matt stutter and grunt in pain behind her.

"What is it?"

Rain paused and turned to look at him. "You good, man?"

He collapsed to the ground, clutching his arm, the one that was marred by three gashes left by the monster's claws.

Alice kneeled down beside him and opened up the case. "You're infected, but you're gonna be okay. I'm not losing you, either."

Before she could finish getting a dose of the antivirus ready, the front doors of the mansion opened. Eight people in white hazard suits began to enter.

One seized the case.

"...Help..." Matt uttered pitifully. Three lifted him off the ground and began carrying him over to a stretcher, disregarding the plea entirely.

"You have to help him. What are you doing?" Three more started to grab Alice. She tried to fight them off. "Get away. Get off!"

The final two started coming for Rain. Both the itch and the burn flared up the instant they reached for her.

Rip. Tear. Kill.

Without warning, she latched onto one of their wrists with her teeth and pulled, tearing a piece of that white suit and a chunk of flesh away in the process. The guy screamed.

"Matt!"

Rip tear bite kill rip tear scratch kill rip tear kill—

Half a dozen more men flooded into the room, attempting to contain Alice and Rain. One of them said something about quarantine and blood tests. Another mentioned a nemesis program in regard to Matt. Rain wasn't paying too much attention, she was too focused on trying to rip the people surrounding them into pieces.

At some point, there was a sharp pain in her neck and everything faded out.

"Rain, no! No!"