PART THREE: BILLY

Chapter 13

'I shouldn't have just left her,' Billy Coen thought to himself as he stopped moving in the opposite direction to where he knew Rebecca Chambers was going. 'You're going to be captured again if you don't keep walking away. There's no sense in that. They'll put you right back on your way to Regason Base, and you know what happens when you get there.'

Moving forward once more, Billy only got three feet further before stopping again. He turned back the way he came, shaking his head. 'She's a brave girl, but you know you can't leave her to face whatever's at that mansion alone.'

That was all the incentive he needed as Billy began to move back in the direction that he'd left Rebecca. It had only been twenty minutes, maybe a little more, since they'd parted ways. Maybe if he quickened his pace, he'd be able to catch back up to her, and they could enter that mansion together. With that thought in mind, he began to jog.

'Her team isn't going to understand,' Billy continued in his mind, running through the possibilities. 'One of them died on The Ecliptic Express, but the rest could still be alive. She'll get back to them, and they'll watch her back. Why do you have to do it?'

Shaking his head, Billy continued to move forward, knowing that the way he had felt on the train he still felt now. They had been swept into a whole lot of insanity, and neither of them were out of the danger. Hell, he was surprised that zombies, dogs, or other creatures hadn't come out of the woodwork during his trek in the opposite direction from where she had gone. The forest of Arklay County had been way too quiet, and that worried him.

'Is Rebecca currently safe?' Billy thought. He quickly shook that thought away, not wanting to give into any potential despair before he knew the facts. She had to be okay. They had survived a lot already, and she would continue to do so.

In the distance, Billy could hear a helicopter, and he figured that had to mean that he was getting at least somewhat close to where that mansion they'd seen in the distance was. Maybe another team of S.T.A.R.S. had been dispatched to reinforce Rebecca's team after probably not hearing anything back from them, or it might've even been regular police from Raccoon City. He wouldn't know for sure till he saw for himself.

However, in his mad dash to hopefully reconnect with Rebecca, he didn't see the massive arm swing out from behind a tree and clothesline him to the ground with a thud. For anyone without training, that would've knocked them unconscious, but Billy was a Marine, or at least, a former Marine, dishonorably discharged, yes, but he had the training and skill, and as such, he was right back on his feet and in a fighting stance, ready for whatever would come.

A grey skinned, bald headed, massively tall man in a white overcoat stepped out from behind the tree. He wore sunglasses and had a blank expression on his face.

Billy had seen enough during the horrors on The Ecliptic Express and in The Umbrella Management Training Facility to know that whoever this was didn't look normal. He wasn't a zombie, but it was likely that he wasn't potentially friendly either.

Someone began clapping their hands from behind Billy, which caused him to turn to where he could partially face both targets.

The other man was very tall as well, and yes, this one was actually a man for certain, which was still undetermined of the first target. The clapping man looked military, but more than likely not United States based.

"What the hell do you people want?" Billy asked.

The military man smirked. "Why, you, Mr. Coen." He had a Russian accent.

"I have to get back to my partner," Billy said. "I don't have time for this."

"Miss Chambers will be perfectly fine," the Russian assured him.

Billy gritted his teeth. "How do you know Rebecca?"

"I don't know her personally," the Russian replied. "I just know that she will soon be reunited with her comrades. She doesn't need you anymore, but we do. Ivan, detain."

The grey skinned man, now with the name Ivan, rushed forward with unbelievable speed that Billy wasn't able to avoid despite trying to do so. Before he could even try to defend himself, a fist hit his face.

Darkness. Billy Coen couldn't see anything. He couldn't move either. If he had to guess, his legs had been shackled down to the floor of wherever he was. Clearly, he was sitting down on a chair somewhere, but where that was, he didn't know. It was highly likely he'd been put in a strait jacket, as his arms were wrapped around his body in fabric that restrained him completely. There was a mask on his face, which was why he couldn't see anything, and from the smell, considering that his nose was the only thing exposed so he could breathe, the mask smelled like leather. There was even some kind of ball gag in his mouth to keep him from speaking. The gag was probably connected to the mask itself.

Trying to remain calm, though failing to really pull that off, Billy did his best to simply listen, hoping beyond hope that he could figure out something, anything at all, about his current situation. There was the sound of light breathing several feet away, so there was someone there with him. He just didn't have a clue who it was.

'At least it isn't a zombie, Coen,' he thought to himself. 'They don't have any reasons to breathe, so maybe I'm at least safe.'

Safe probably wasn't the right word, but he didn't really have a clue what word to actually use. A Russian man and a very powerful grey man had taken him. They clearly weren't with the Military Police, and it wasn't likely they were from Regason Base. Could they have been from The Umbrella Corporation? Maybe they were trying to clean up the mess that had been occurring out here. Considering that Billy was a witness to everything, taking him captive made sense.

'Out of one imprisonment and into another one,' Billy surmised. 'And since you're a witness to their wrongdoing, you're more than likely still going to get the death penalty, just from Umbrella instead of The United States.'

"They survived," a very smooth-talking voice said just outside of the chopper.

'Just listen, Coen, and don't let anyone think that you're awake,' Billy thought to himself as he tried to slump himself as much as he could, hoping it would at least appear like he was still unconscious.

"A minor inconvenience," the familiar Russian voice said.

'At least I know who you are,' Billy thought to himself, angered that this man had done this to him. He had tried to do the right thing by turning around to go rejoin Rebecca, and it had cost him. If he had just kept going in the same direction he'd been moving, they might have never found him.

The sound of footfalls occurred as the people were apparently getting into whatever Billy had been in. Maybe now he'd know where he was. It became clear to him he was probably in a vehicle, but considering the footsteps he was hearing, maybe it was something else, like a helicopter. That made sense. The seat he was sitting on wasn't particularly comfortable, so him being in a car or similar wasn't likely.

Then Billy heard the engine start up and could hear propellers moving, and that was all he needed to know he had been right about it being a helicopter.

"That Tyrant is going to fly us out of here?" the smooth voice asked.

'Tyrant?' Billy thought in confusion. 'Could he mean the grey skinned man named Ivan? He was a tyrant? What does that mean?'

"Trust me," the Russian began, "he's highly trained."

"I've never seen a Tyrant series so adapt and powerful," the smooth voice said. "Red Umbrella has been busier than I thought."

Red Umbrella. That was what Billy needed to hear. They had taken him, and Rebecca had absolutely no clue of it having happened.

"Yes, well, we are very adept at secrecy," the Russian said.

Billy would've scoffed at that if he hadn't been gagged. Truest thing to ever be said about Umbrella.

"Does that include him?" the smooth voice asked.

"For the time being," the Russian replied.

'Are they talking about me?' Billy thought. 'They have to be. Unless they're referring to the other breathing I heard earlier. I might not be the only one that got captured by the Russian and Ivan the Tyrant.'

"What about the one in cockpit?" the smooth voice asked.

'Ah, so there was someone else in here,' Billy thought.

"Checks and balances," the Russian replied.

'What the hell is that supposed to mean?' Billy thought, annoyed that he wasn't getting more out of this conversation.

"Am I supposed to know what that means?" the smooth voice asked.

"All in due time, good doctor," the Russian replied. "You worry too much."

"It is more that I'm not accustomed to having so little of the information," the smooth voice told him.

"It makes you feel like you're not in control," the Russian surmised. "Yes, I can understand that. Trust me when I say that none of us in this chopper are actually in control. Hell, I couldn't even finish my task that I left you and Ivan to do."

"Are you even allowed to tell me what that was about?" the smooth voice asked.

'Maybe now we're getting somewhere,' Billy thought.

"I can ask one thing, because it may help with my explanation to Mr. Trent," the Russian replied. "Do you know anything about The Red Queen AI?"

'Mr. Trent,' Billy noted to himself. 'The Red Queen AI. Gotta remember this stuff. I need to piece together this insanity somehow.'

"I heard she was a homicidal bitch," the smooth voice replied. "That James Marcus had a brilliant computer programmer named Simon Barr create her to carry out a lot of the security features in all facilities from the background, but she isn't supposed to be active. That's why I called her a homicidal bitch. The first time she was brought fully online, she killed ten people with a laser security system that she constructed herself. Damn thing was like Skynet. So, she got relegated to minimal support and has little to no control."

'James Marcus,' Billy thought. 'That's a name I know, but Simon Barr is another new one. I hope I don't run into The Red Queen at some point. Doesn't sound like she'd be very fun.'

"Something apparently changed then," the Russian said. "And that will not bode well. Let us hope that Mr. Trent is in an understanding mood when he finds out this information."

"Yes, lets," the smooth voice said.

The rest of their trip seemed to be going the silent route as neither of them spoke again, which annoyed Billy to no end. He needed to know what was going on. If he managed to escape somewhere down the line, he'd have to let Rebecca, or at least someone, know exactly what was going down.

The very little he had to work with wasn't nearly enough. Billy had absolutely no proof of anything that he and Rebecca had gone through. She had taken the notes that they'd found along the way to use for her own investigation.

That was when he shockingly remembered something very important that didn't bode well for him in his current situation: Rebecca was more than likely going to have him pronounced dead in her report. There was no guarantee that anyone would believe what she said, and that would be even more so if they didn't believe the insanity of what The Umbrella Corporation had been up to in Arklay County.

It was becoming increasingly clear to Billy Coen that The Umbrella Corporation were probably perceived as a company that could do no wrong, and no one would believe slander from anyone against them. If he even managed to escape, his insane ramblings wouldn't be believed, and they'd try to make everyone believe that he was trying to get an insanity plea so he couldn't be put to death.

No, after everything he'd seen since the Military Police vehicle had been overturned, after someone had walked out into the road, Billy honestly believed now that there were worse fates than death, and he was only at the beginning of being lost in that nightmare.