The laboratory on the lower level was like a science-themed vision of hell. What little illumination there was was again provided by little more than broken, flickering lights; what those lights revealed was a full-on charnel house. Blood was everywhere. Within glass containment booths, the three of them could observe scientists' bodies twisted into horrifying contortions; other such observation rooms showed that Isaacs had apparently grown bored and settled for impaling his victims, or suspending them from the ceiling.

"The fuck is that?" Rebecca said. Kaplan and Rain followed her line of sight and saw… an orb of water, suspended by some kind of machinery, lit up like an aquarium was. Inside of it was…

"Holy shit, is that Alice?" Kaplan said, walking up to the sphere.

Rain approached, scrutinized the face for a moment, then shook her head. "Not my Alice," she signed.

Rebecca reached out and touched the surface, eyes practically bugging out of her head when the water rippled at her touch. "Some kind of… antigravity?" she said aloud, speculating what the fuck this machine even was. "A force field?" Her fingertips felt dry, so maybe the latter?

Within the bubble, the clone's eyes, closed, flitted about, in the midst of an intense dream. "Alright, we have to find our Alice," Kaplan concluded, tearing his eyes away from the intense sight.

Sounds of movement could be heard in the shadows. The trio readied their weapons, scanning the darkness for any sign of Isaacs.

Too bad it was too dark. Too bad Isaacs was too quick. He darted into their midst, a hideous swelling overtaking half of his body, and bodyslammed Kaplan, who landed against a nearby wall. He swatted Rain with his… well, his less-deformed arm, who landed against the surface of the bubble, destabilizing its surface and jolting the Alice within awake. She watched in horror as Rain drew one of her kukris and threw it at Isaacs, the blade burying itself into his chest. Panicked, she began writhing about, and the already-destabilized bubble burst, water spilling out onto the laboratory floor, and onto Rain, who caught the nude woman in her arms.

Rain watched, agonized, as the clone took a few struggled breaths, then expired. She looked to the fallen flashlight which marked where Kaplan had landed. "Kkkkaaaappp?" she hissed.

"I'm —" A cough interrupted his sentence. "I'm fine! Go stop Isaacs!" He coughed some more, making Rain doubt his self-diagnosis, but she had no time to check on him. For all she knew, he was making a beeline for the vault where her Alice was locked away in a goddamn bubble.

Rebecca shooed her away. "Go on, get his ass," she encouraged, kneeling down to perform CPR on the clone. Rain nodded and gave chase.

She found the kukri discarded a little ways down a hallway that led off from the slaughterhouse room. Following the trail of blood, she found herself…

Oh, this had to be a fucking joke. It was the hallway of the mansion where Alice had lived. Umbrella had recreated it down to the last detail, including… yep, there it was, the wedding photo of Alice and the shitgoblin himself.

Focused as she was on the picture, she almost didn't see the reflection in the picture's silvery frame. She dodged out of the way, Isaacs' fist rending the table the picture had sat on into scrap. He let out a shriek and tried for another backhand; Rain ducked out of the way, resulting in Isaacs putting his fist through the wall. Rain drew her remaining kukri, wishing like hell she'd had the time to stop and search the slaughterhouse room for her pistol. They circled one another for a moment, eying each other, until Isaacs lashed out with his right arm… which appeared to end in a series of claws several feet long. Rain dodged the blow again and slashed him several times with her blade.

She lunged forward again, trying to lop off his 'good' arm, when he caught her wrist and shoved her violently towards the end of the hall. The kukri, improbably, fell tip-first, embedding itself into the wooden flooring. Rain sat up and watched, horrified, as the large slash in his chest simply knitted itself together. For the first time, she really drank in his appearance — tumorous-looking growths large and small simply coated his entire right half, so that it was impossible to tell where one began and another one ended. His right eye had gone completely cloudy.

And then he spoke to her: "You can't kill me," he said, and Rain noted fresh blood on his lips.

She made a rush for the kukri, but just as she reached it he shot out his claw arm… and the claws turned into fucking prehensile tentacles, wrapping themselves around her throat (unimportant, she didn't need to breathe) and two of them positioning for a strike through her eyes and into her brain (considerably more important). She stomped her foot down on the flooring, and thank God for the scientists' shoddy carpentry because it caused the other end of the piece of wood — the one with the kukri embedded in it — to shoot up, propelling the blade into the air. She grabbed it and slashed away at the tentacles, slicing right through them. She pulled the one still wrapped around her neck off and threw it down in disgust.

She looked up and saw that the tentacles had already regrown; Isaacs thrust his arm forward in a new attack, meant to utterly impale Rain. She knew, given the speed of the attack, that it was hopeless, but she still attempted to dodge to the side.

She found herself miraculously un-impaled. She heard Isaacs roaring with fury and looked up from where she'd ended up sprawled. That damned zombie dog that she'd completely forgotten about had leapt up onto Isaacs and was savaging his throat. Isaacs tried yanking it off with his 'good' arm, to no avail; it was latched on there tight. Rain gave a savage grin. "Good boy," she projected to the undead canine. Its tail began wagging happily.

Isaacs tilted his claw arm back and shot forth the tentacles. They pierced the zombie dog in numerous places on its side and neck; it released Isaacs' throat with a terrified yelp of pain. Once it was off of him, the tentacles flicked it off, the zombie dog slamming into the wall and falling to the ground, its unlife snuffed out.

Rain let out a furious shriek at Isaacs, opening her mental pathways and attempting to mentally assault him with everything she had.

It wasn't enough.

Isaacs answered her with a shriek of his own, emanating a psionic shockwave of such force that Rain found herself blown backwards through the wall… and into the replicated laser corridor room. "Fffffuuuccckk," she grunted.

Isaacs slowly walked in, menace rolling off him. Rain crawled away on the floor, eventually pushing herself up and launching into fisticuffs with the terror. She knew she was fucked, there was no way she could overwhelm Isaacs. This was basically her giving Rebecca and Kaplan enough time to regroup and figure out a way to kill this motherfucker good and proper.

Even so, the time she was buying them was pitifully small. She found herself sprawled out on the floor once more, at the far end of the corridor, nowhere left to run. Isaacs walked up to her and gave out another frightful bellow, but restrained himself from amping it up with psionic energy, which would have pulverized Rain utterly. Instead, he began to speak again.

"For so long, I thought Abernathy was the future," he opined. "Then I discovered your existence and thought you were the answer I was looking for." He shook his head. "I was wrong. I am the future." He raised his claws for one final blow.

Laughter rang out from behind him. He turned around.

"Hello, future," Alice said, leaning against the doorway clad in her birthday suit. "I'm Alice." Her pupils flickered and Isaacs began ping-ponging rapidly against the walls, floor, and ceiling. He roared in anger and pain, attempting to move his limbs or shoot out his tentacles or anything but an invisible wall of force had him pincered.

After a few moments of this, Alice clutched her temples. "Owie," she grunted. "This psychic superpower shit is hard on the ol' noggin." She turned her head and called out, "Hit it, sister!"

The laser hallway came to life, the grid formation passing through Isaacs like a rotten burrito through the digestive tract. Alice began walking forward before the laser even had time to kick off (just shy of Rain, of course), knocking the Isaacs-shaped pile of meat over before it had a chance to collapse on its own.

"Oh baby," Alice murmured, crouching down to cradle Rain. "My knight in shining armor, come to save me from the big Umbrella meanies."

Rain licked her lips, unbelieving that this was actually happening. She tentatively opened the psychic connection and sent out a timid, "Is it really you?" while reaching up to physically caress her face.

"It's me, my love," Alice mentally returned, raining kisses all over Rain's cracked zombie face. "Now, what do you say we go swing by a McDonald's before we hit the police station?" she asked aloud. "I mean, I assume Umbrella would be beholden to a more significant authority than the local cop shop, but hey, gotta start someplace, right?"

"Babe," Rain broadcast. "There aren't any more McDonald's."

"Oh my God, Demolition Man came true?" Alice said excitedly. "Are all restaurants Taco Bell?"

"Alice…" Rain sent out a mental sigh. "The world has been swept by the T-virus. We're in year 5 of the zombie apocalypse. Billions are dead. Umbrella operates openly and with impunity."

"Huh." Alice frowned. "Well… that is a bit of a downer, I admit." She blew out a sigh. "Hey, you came here with that Rebecca girl? She and sis tracked me down and got me out of cold storage easy peasy. Anybody else here?"

Rain nodded. "Kaplan," she broadcast.

"No shit?" Alice smiled. "Hell, if we can find Matty down here it'll be a full-on Hive reunion!" She looked down and realized she was still starkers. "Oh yeah, we've got company, huh? Best to go put something on." She saw Rain giving her an appreciative look and smiled coyly. "Now now, babe, we've got plenty of time for that later. And it's not like we haven't been nastying it up like crazy in our dreams all this time, unbeknownst to us."

Rain could feel Alice's discomfort at navigating the replica of her old house, but relished in the other woman's laughter when she saw the smashed picture frame of her and Spence's wedding. In the duplicate of her bedroom, the scientists had thoughtfully laid out a fresh red dress for Alice number 88, which Alice number 1 took. They made their way out of the replica mansion and back into the facility. "Geez, these assholes need to pay their electric bill," Alice grumbled. "Oh, look, it's one of those cool curvy Australian knife things!" she said, pointing to the kukri.

"That's a kukri, love," Rain beamed, pleasantly happy from the stupid banter.

"A cookie, you say?" Alice made a big show of licking her lips. "Good, I'm starving!" She bent over as if to pick it up, but stopped when Rain gave her a swat on the bottom. "Alright, alright," she groused.

They made it to the scientist slaughterhouse room, and saw Rebecca and Alice's clone (who'd left the laser controls to go check on her other new friends) — we're calling her 88 — standing over where she'd been birthed out of the bubble. Alice and her clone made eye contact and Alice gave her a cheerful wave and a smile. Alice's clone did not return the wave, and her face was drawn. Rebecca's body language, too, was off, and far too tense.

"Something's wrong," Alice murmured, and she and Rain rushed over the rest of the way.

They beheld Kaplan, still laying where Isaacs had knocked him, blood dribbling freely from his mouth, skin pale. "Hey, A-Alice," he greeted half-heartedly.

"Hey, Kap," Alice said, worried look on her face. "How are you feeling?"

"…Been better," he acknowledged.

"I'm pretty sure he's got internal bleeding," Rebecca said. "When Isaacs hit him and he hit the wall, he probably ruptured something."

"Can… can we do anything about it?" Alice asked.

Rebecca shook her head. "We'd need to get him to a hospital ASAP, and they don't have hospitals anymore."

"I heard," Alice said. She sat down next to Kaplan and grabbed his hand. "Anything I can get you, buddy?"

Kaplan shook his head. "I'll… I'll be seeing Carlos soon, that's all I need."

"Carlos?" Alice asked.

Kaplan wiggled his ring finger and Alice noticed the gold band on it. "Oh my God I fucking knew it," she said, grinning even as she wept.

"He died to get us in here," Kaplan murmured. "We kissed one last time… and it happened." He gestured to Rain. "Like with you and her."

Alice gave him a big, happy smile. "I'm so happy for you, Kap," she said, tear flow intensifying.

Kaplan winced as something painful throbbed inside him. "I don't have long…"

"I'm with you all the way, buddy," Alice promised him.

Kaplan wiped the blood off his lips. "There's something I gotta do before I go. Something you wanted me to do."

Alice's eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "I don't know what —" She stopped dead in mid-sentence, eyes shining with more tears. "…Best man?"

"Best man," he confirmed, managing a weak smile.

Alice looked up at Rain. "Honey, I know it's really short notice, but do you wanna get married like right now?"

Rain smiled and nodded. Hers was the only set of dry eyes in the house, and she wished she were still capable of producing tears.

"Alright, I've got my best man, so…" She pointed at Rebecca and her clone. "Eeny meeny miney moe…"

"What the fuck?" Rebecca said.

"Tag, you're it," Alice said, pointing at Rebecca. "You get to be our officiant." She turned to her clone. "And will you be the one to give me away?"

88 was, like, five minutes old and only had the bog-standard memory package (because otherwise clones wouldn't know how to walk or talk or use the toilet and so forth), but even she knew this was extremely nonstandard wacky shit. "Uhhh, okay?" she finally said, not knowing what else to do.

Rebecca looked down at Kaplan. "Do you really want your last moments to be a farce?" she asked.

"Better than a tragedy," he muttered back.

Rebecca sighed. "Okay, fine, fuck it. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of Alice Abernathy and Rain Ocampo, two souls who have already joined as one because magic is apparently fucking real —"

"Hey, stick to the script!" Alice chided.

"Nobody gave me a goddamn script!" Rebecca snapped, before massaging the bridge of her nose. "Sorry, sorry… Who gives away this woman?"

"Um, I do," said 88. She patted Alice on the back, unsure of what else she was supposed to be doing.

"You're doing great!" Alice reassured her.

"Um, shit. What else do they say in weddings…" Rebecca muttered. "Oh, the ring!" She frowned. "Well, I guess you can't —"

"She can," Kaplan murmured. He worked the ring off his own finger.

"Oh, Kap, no," Alice said, shaking her head, heart breaking all over again.

"Ain't like I'm gonna be needing it anymore," he pointed out, letting out another cough. "Besides, it's tradition. 'Something borrowed', right?"

"Right," Alice nodded, taking the ring and presenting it to Rain. Rain removed her own engagement ring (the one that at one point had belonged to Spence Parks) and gave it to Alice, and the two women slipped on the rings.

Rebecca nodded, satisfied. "By the power vested in me by… oh hell, does God actually exist?"

"Rebecca, focus!" Alice said.

"Right, philosophical debates later," Rebecca agreed. "By the power vested in me by, uh, the Raccoon City S.T.A.R.S., I pronounce you… wife and wife. Yeah. You may now kiss one another."

Rain and Alice exchanged their marital kiss, and that shit was just really sweet. I'm not gonna bother explaining it further!

"What God has joined together, let no one…" Kaplan trailed off.

"Kap?" Alice said, squeezing his hand. "Chad?" Rebecca checked his pulse and shook her head. "…Oh, Kaplan." She reached out a hand and closed his eyes as hers rained down on her wedding day.

XXX

"All attempts to contact the North American facility continue to fail," Wesker informed the board. He was reasonably sure that, judging by the last transmission sent out by the White Queen, that Isaacs had been infected with something nasty he'd been working on and slaughtered everyone on-site. Good fucking riddance, except…

"How long have they been off the air?" asked one of the boardmembers.

"Seventeen hours," Wesker said. "We must consider them lost. But our plans remain unchanged. All data will be transferred to this facility, and the research will continue under my… personal supervision." He allowed a little smirk to appear on his face. "I expect results within one month."

"Oh, hey! Is this thing working?" Alice fucking Abernathy, in hologram form, appeared at the other end of the table. "Hey, reporting in from Nevada! Loyal employee Alice Ocampo reporting for duty!" She saluted. What the fuck was this. "And you're… wait, no, don't tell me… Alfred Whiskey! Hi, boss!"

Wesker, with monumental effort, ignored the butchering of his name. "Ocampo?" he asked, as if he was wholly ignorant of Rain Ocampo's involvement.

"Oh, me and the missus finally tied the knot," Alice explained. "And 'Alice Ocampo' is so much prettier than 'Rain Abernathy'." She kicked her feet up on the table. "So! I've been out for a few years on, ah, medical leave, and I expect I'll be taking the next few weeks off for, haha, marital leave, if you catch my drift." She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. "But I can give you an update on how things are progressing at good ol' Hive Vegas, as I've lovingly dubbed it."

Wesker forced a bland smile on his face. "Please, Mrs. Ocampo, by all means."

Alice nodded. "Well, first of all, everyone here has tragically succumbed to a mysterious illness. The symptoms all seem to involve the individual's blood being forcibly removed from their bodies by means of a number of holes. Dr. Isaacs attempted to demonstrate to my wifey how exactly he believed these holes were made — purely by coincidence, he grew a bigass set of prehensile tentacle claws on one arm, some real Wolverine shit — but he unfortunately fell prey to the laser hallway he had set up in his insane torture chamber where he brutally murdered over eighty of my clones."

"That is unfortunate," Wesker agreed. "Were there any survivors?"

Alice nodded. "Me, Rain — though since she hasn't been, strictly speaking, alive for the past five years I'm not sure she really counts — Rebecca Chambers, 88 — that's my affectionate name for one of my clone sisters — oh, and all the rest of my clone sisters. There's a few hundred of them? And a lot of them all seem to have access to some cool-ass psychic powers, which is gonna be fun as shit, let me tell you." She gave the board a shark grin.

Wesker blinked nervously. Thank God for his sunglasses. "So, Mrs. Ocampo, what are your plans for after your… marital leave?"

"Oh, continue being a loyal Umbrella employee, of course," Alice said breezily. "Oh, speaking of, how's Angie doing?"

Shit shit shit. "…Angie?" Wesker asked.

"Oh, you know, Angela Ashford? Middle schooler? Daughter of Chuck Ashford, wheelchair enthusiast? Has a lunchbox with some shitass anime that Umbrella produces? …Oh, do you guys still put out episodes of that?"

Wesker smiled, but he could tell it came across as a snarl. "Regrettably, Umbrella's animation division was not earmarked for any of our survival bunkers," he said.

"Ah, a shame," Alice shrugged. "But yeah, I'd like to say hi to Angie if she's running around somewhere over there, yeah?" At Wesker's silence, she chuckled. "Okay, if she's in the shitter or something, I understand. I can wait."

"Ms. Ocampo, here's the thing —" Wesker began.

"No, Alfred — can I call you Al?" she asked.

"No, you may not," Wesker growled, and he didn't even bother to hide it this time. "My name is Albert Wesker, if your hearing is any better than your mental state."

"Okay, Al," Alice barged on, ignoring his denial. "Look, let me let you in on a little secret: if I don't see Angie and talk to her and get reassured that she's okay in, oh, sixty seconds, then I… am going to file a complaint with HR."

"HR, much like animation, didn't make it either," Wesker said with no small amount of joy.

"Fifty-six seconds," Alice said. The look on her face was no longer playful.

"Mrs. Ocampo, you don't seem to realize that you're not in a position to make demands," Wesker tried to explain.

"Oh, I wasn't making demands," Alice said. She turned to the other board members. "Fellas, did it sound like I was making demands?" Without waiting for any of them to answer, she turned back to Wesker. "It's merely a part of my employment contract that my continued presence at Umbrella is contingent on Angela Ashford having a safe, happy, and healthy life." She smirked. "Thirty-nine seconds."

"Be that as it may, you can't simply expect us to cough up an individual at the drop of a hat," Wesker argued.

"Matt Addison," Alice said.

"…Pardon?" Wesker said, confused.

"Matt Addison, known in some circles as Project Nemesis, was also part of my contract. Care to tell me what happened to him, or are you gonna spin me more bullshit lies? Twenty-six seconds." She tapped her blank wrist, where her imaginary wristwatch lay.

Wesker grunted. "Mr. Addison is… safe, Mrs. Ocampo. His needs are looked after, his disabilities are compensated for, he has a fulfilling life with Umbrella."

Alice smiled. "Glad to hear it. See how easy that was? Now tell me about Angie."

"…I can't," Wesker bit out.

"You have fifteen seconds to explain why you can't," Alice said. "Make 'em count."

Wesker began to feel nervous. "Mrs. Ocampo, let me assure you that myself and Umbrella never sought to deceive you with regards to Ms. Ashford. We invested the utmost effort and care into her wellbeing, and —"

"Bullshit," Alice interrupted. "Ten seconds."

"It's not bullshit," Wesker snapped.

"You're taking an awful long time to tell me she died," Alice said.

"Ms. Abernathy, I can assure you, Angela Ashford is not dead," Wesker said with finality.

"Now, why don't I believe that?" Alice asked. "Oh, time's up. And I know it's hard to get used to, but my last name is Ocampo now, okay?" Wesker gave her a curt nod. "Great!" she grinned. "Just remember, Al, it's nothing to go crying about, right?"

Wesker felt a tear running down his cheek and wiped at it. His fingers were smudged with blood. A vise of horror clamped down on his heart, just as something else far less metaphorical clamped down on his brain and began squeezing it like a lemon. A scream ripped itself from his throat, and he shot his arm out and swept his workstation from his table. The computer and the monitor both sailed to the floor, the monitor cracking and blacking out, the computer itself angrily sparking once before the sound of its fans died. The pressure on his brain immediately relieved itself as Alice and the rest of the holographic images of the board members flickered out of existence, and he rested his head on the desk, relief flooding him.

If only he'd managed to persuade Isaacs to have a fail-safe mechanism installed in the Nevada base. One flick of a switch and thirty seconds later there would be a very large hole in the western United States, a new Grand Canyon, practically. The tourists would have loved it, if any still existed.

His mind turned to what Alice's next move would be. Most likely, it would be an attack on the Umbrella base in Tokyo, the very place he'd resided for years now. The facility would be no great loss, of course… but if Alice brought along her duplicates, perhaps he could wipe the whole lot of them out with the purging of the facility. And maybe… just maybe… if she left Rebecca behind in Nevada…

He sat back up, removed his wallet from his pants, and took out the picture. It was faded and a bit fragile around the edges from constant handling, but it still clearly showed Rebecca Chambers in her RPD athleticwear, basketball cradled in her lap, tummy exposed. He knew that people would get the wrong impression if they ever found he had this photo — they'd think he was some hormone-driven sex pest, who'd part Rebecca's legs and have his way with her at the first given opportunity. No, he had no interest in something as puerile as physical affection… but the sheer magnitude of her intelligence had long captivated Wesker, and if he had the opportunity to once and for all bring her into the fold… well, he'd seize it greedily with both hands. He lovingly caressed the face on the photo and replaced it into his wallet.

XXXXXXXXXX

Apologies for the overlong chapter (I've mentioned my preference for sub-4K word chapters before), but there just didn't seem to be a good enough spot to split it roughly down the middle.

Umbrella apparently has antigravity, or force field technology, or something like that, and this is never elaborated upon, much like their other achievements in Super Science.

RIP zombie dog. :'( I know this one really hurts, but Rain doesn't have the same psychic powers Alice does, and she had very little chance of surviving the encounter without his sacrifice.

Alice, being on ice for half a decade, definitely would not be aware of the world situation, hahaha. (And Rain never bothered to tell her, thinking it was just Dream Alice and not Real Alice. "Hey babe, on the off chance that you're in fact you and not just a figment of my imagination, the human race is on its last legs from the global zombie pandemic, just FYI").

And RIP Kaplan. Man, this whole entry was just a Favorite Character Graveyard, huh? I didn't want to keep Carlos and Kaplan apart, though.

88 is gonna be one of the main characters of Send in the Clones, a little intermission story coming up next before the 'meat and potatoes' story that consists of the events of Afterlife. It's gonna be fun, fun, fun, hahahaha. It should be uploaded very soon!

Oh, Angie, Angie, Angie, where have you gone? What's become of you? Are you still alive, or was Wesker lying about that? Guess we'll have to wait and see!

That picture Wesker has is an Easter egg you can find upon searching Wesker's desk a bunch of times in the police station in the RE2 game. Since I brought Rebecca into the movieverse, I figured why not go really nuts with it? (I think I heard somewhere that Wesker is basically asexual, which really tracks with Alice constantly being fitted with those privacy bibs, haha).