Trying not to breathe too deeply, Leon reached the bottom of the metal ladder and turned around quickly, aiming the Magnum into the thick gloom. Murky water sloshed over his boots, and as his eyes adjusted to the low light, he saw the source of the terrible smell.

Parts of it, anyway...

The subbasement tunnel stretching out in front of him was littered with body parts, human corpses that had been torn into pieces. Limbs and heads and torsos were strewn randomly through the stone pas- sage, lapped at gently by the few inches of dark water that covered the floor. "Leon? How is it?" Ada's voice floated down from the circle of light above the ladder, echoing hollowly around him. Leon didn't answer, his shocked gaze fixed on the terrible scene, his brain trying to add up the shredded parts and come up with a number.

How many? How many people?

Too many to count. He saw a faceless head, the long hair streaming around it in a cloud. A heavy woman's decapitated trunk, one breast bobbing above the rippling darkness. An arm encased in the tatters of a cop's dress shirt. A bare leg, still wearing a sneaker. A curled hand, the fingers slick and white.

A dozen? Twenty? "Leon?" Ada's tone had sharpened. "It's... it looks okay," he called, struggling to keep his voice from cracking. "Nothing moving." "I'm coming down."

He stepped away from the ladder to give her room, remembering something she'd said before, something about bodies being dumped... Ada stepped off the bottom rung, splashing into the dark tunnel. His eyes had adjusted well enough to see a look of disgust cross her delicate features - disgust and something like sadness. "There was an attack in the garage," she said softly. "Fourteen or fifteen people died..."

She trailed off, frowning, and took a step past him

to get a closer look at the severed and mutilated

remains. When she spoke again, she sounded worried.

"I didn't see the attack, but I don't think they were torn up like this."

She looked up, scanning the roof of the tunnel, gripping her nine-millimeter tightly. Leon followed her gaze, but only saw algae-thick stone. Ada shook her head, looking back down at the gently rippling sea of broken flesh.

"The zombies didn't do this. Something got to these people after they were killed."

Leon felt a chill go up his spine. That was about the last thing he wanted to hear, standing in the humid, stinking dark and surrounded by savaged bodies.

"So it's not safe down here. We should head back up and..."

Ada started forward, stepping through the tangled limbs, the sound of her careful, sloshing movements seeming very loud in the otherwise silent tunnel.

Damn, does she ignore everybody, or is it just me?

Watching his step, Leon followed, reaching out with his free hand to touch her shoulder. "At least let me go first, okay?" "Fine," she said, sounding almost but not quite exasperated. "Lead the way." He stepped in front of her, and they started forward again, Leon trying to divide his attention between the darkness ahead and the sodden pieces of flesh and bone underfoot. Just ahead, the tunnel turned to the right, and there was some light reflected off the oily surface of the water; the passage was clearer, too, with not as many bodies. Leon paused just long enough to unshoulder the Remington, checking to make sure he'd chambered a round. Whatever had gotten to the corpses didn't seem to be around, but he didn't want to be unpre- pared if it came back. Ada waited without speaking, though he could feel her impatience - not for the first time, he wondered if there was more to her story than she'd told him. He was scared, and he was also cold and tired and afraid for Claire, who might still be wandering the station...... he didn't even know if Claire was still alive; but he hadn't felt right about letting Ada walk into a bad situation on her own. Ada, on the other hand... she was as calm and controlled as a veteran soldier, expressing nothing but a kind of irritable eagerness to get on with things and if she appreciated his presence at all, she was taking great pains not to show it. It wasn't that he needed or wanted her gratitude...

... but wouldn't most people be happy to have a cop along? Even a rookie?

Maybe not, and it wasn't the time or place to start asking questions. Leon shut down his thinking and started moving again, stepping gingerly over a chewed-up chunk of flesh that he couldn't identify. "Stop," Ada whispered sharply. "Listen." Leon tensed, Remington in one hand, Magnum in the other. He tilted his head, straining to hear, but there was only a distant, hollow drip of water...... and a soft thumping. A rapid but random sound, like padded hammers on a padded surface. Whatever it was, it was getting closer, coming toward them from where the tunnel turned up ahead.

Why isn't it splashing, why don't we hear water?

Leon backed up a step, raising both weapons slightly, remembering how Ada had looked at the ceiling before...... and saw it, saw it and felt his heart stop in midbeat. A spider the size of a big dog, skittering over the wet stones halfway up the inner wall, its bristling, hairy legs tapping -

- not possible -

-and then there was a series of deafening explo-sions next to his right ear, bam-bam-bam-bam, the muzzle flash from Ada's Beretta strobing the hellish tunnel as she fired. The booming echoes pounded through the dark as the giant, impossible arachnid dropped from the wall, splashing into the inky water. It crawled toward them, wounded, dragging two of its multiple legs through the murk behind it, dark fluids spilling out from its grotesquely rounded body. It humped itself over a human head, the mutilated skull rolling out from beneath its swollen, pulsing abdomen, and Leon could see its shining black eyes, each the size of a ping-pong ball...... and he squeezed the trigger on the Remington, not even feeling the kick of the thundering blast, his entire focus on the inconceivable arachnid. The round hit it squarely, blowing its alien face into a thousand wet pieces. The spider flipped over backwards with a skidding splash, its thick legs quivering, curling in over its furred body. His ears ringing, his heart pounding, Leon cham- bered another round, his mind telling him that he had not just blown away a spider that big, the physics was wrong, it couldn't happen because it would collapse under its own weight...... Ada pushed past him, running ahead, shouting back to him.

"Come on, there could be more coming!"

Leon took off after her, forced by Ada's reckless behavior to put his shock on hold. He sprinted through the dark, jumping over the disturbed and gently rocking hunks of flesh, past the closed dead spider that would never have existed in the reality he'd known before Raccoon.

"Drop your weapon," Irons commanded, and the girl did so, hesitating for only a second. The Browning clattered to the floor, and Irons had to resist the urge to laugh again, scarcely able to credit how stupidly she'd acted. The Umbrella assassin had obviously grown arrogant, walking into his Sanctuary as if she owned the place - and her smug, inflated conceit had cost her the game.

"Turn around, slow - and keep your hands where I can see them," he said, still grinning. Oh, what a gloriously easy conquest! Umbrella had underesti- mated him for the last time. Again, the girl did as he asked, pivoting slowly, her hands empty and open. The look on her face was priceless, her aquiline features fixed in a mask of fear and shock; she hadn't expected this, she thought it would be a simple task to take out Brian Irons. After all, he was a broken man, a shadow of his former self, his city, his life taken away... "Mistaken, weren't you?" he said, feeling the hu-mor leak out of the situation, feeling the anger stir again. He kept the VP70 trained on her ridiculously young face; insulting, that they'd sent a child in to do their dirty work. Even such a pretty one... "Calm down, Chief Irons," she said, and even angry, he was pleased to hear the strain in her sultry voice, the edge of fear beneath her useless plea. He was going to enjoy this, even more than he'd imag- ined...

... but first, some answers.

"Who sent you? Was it Coleman, from headquar-

ters? Or did your orders come from higher up...

... someone on the board, perhaps? There's no point in

lying, not anymore."

The girl stared at him, her eyes wide with feigned confusion. "I... I don't know what you're talking about. Please, there's been some kind of a mistake..."Oh, there's been a mistake, all right," Irons spat, "and you made it. How long has Umbrella been watching me? What were your orders, exactly - were you supposed to kill me outright, or did Umbrella want to see me suffer a little more first?"

The girl didn't answer for a moment, obviously trying to decide how much to tell him. She was good, her expression still carefully arranged to show only a

bewildered fear, but he saw right through it. She's been caught, she must know that I won't let her live and she's going to try and conceal the truth, even now. Young, but well-trained. "I came to Raccoon looking for my brother," she said slowly, her wide gray eyes fixed on the gun.

"He was with the S.T.A.R.S., and I just..." "S.T.A.R.S.? Is that the best you can do?" Irons laughed bitterly, shaking his head. The Raccoon

S.T.A.R.S. had fled well before things had fallen to Shit - and last he'd heard, Umbrella had already "converted" the organization to their purposes, and was working to eliminate those who wouldn't cross over. As a cover story, it didn't play.

But there is something...

He narrowed his eyes, studying her pale, anxious face. "And just who is your brother?" "Chris Redfield, you know him - I'm Claire, his sister, and I don't know anything about whatever Umbrella did, and I wasn't sent here to kill you." She spoke quickly, all but stumbling over herself to get her story out. She did look like Redfield, through the eyes at Least... although why she thought that connection would help her somehow was beyond him. Chris Redfield was a pompous, disrespectful upstart who had openly defied him many times; in fact.

"Redfield was working for Umbrella, wasn't he?"

Even saying it aloud, Irons could see that it was the truth and his anger swelled up like a red tide, an acid heat that flushed through his veins and made him feel sick.

Even my employees, all along. Treasonous Umbrella puppets. "The Spencer estate, the accusations against Um-brella... it was all a setup, they had him stirring up trouble to... to distract me so they could steal Birkin's new virus..."

Irons took a step toward the girl, barely able to keep himself from pulling the trigger in spite of his plans. The girl, Claire, took a step back, holding up her hands, palms out, as if to ward off his righteous fury.

"That's how the S.T.A.R.S. knew to get out of town," he snarled, "they were warned to get out of town before the T-Virus leak!"

He took another step forward, but Claire had stopped, her eyes going even wider. "You mean Chris isn't here?"

Her small, hopeful whisper only fed the red, burn- ing heat that pounded through him and the feelings were so powerful that they transcended rage, focusing his intentions into something brutal and precise. It wasn't enough that he'd been betrayed by Umbrella and the S.T.A.R.S., it wasn't enough that he'd been manipulated, tormented, hunted.

No. No, I have to be lied to by this little girl, a spy and an assassin from a family of traitors, A lifetime devoted to service, a lifetime of hard-won experience and self-sacrifice, and this is my reward. "A slap in the face," he said, his voice as cold as this new savagery that filled him up, transforming him into the hunter. "Treating me like an idiot. You don't even have enough respect to lie well."

He extended the nine-millimeter and walked to- ward her, each step measured and deliberate and her fear was real this time, he could see it in the way she stumbled back, her lips trembling, her young chest heaving in a most delicious way. She was terrified, trying to look for a weapon and watch him and get away all at the same time, succeeding at none of them as he marched forward. "I have the power," he said, "this is my Sanctuary, this is my domain. You are the intruder. You are the liar, you are the evil - and I'm going to skin you alive. I'm going to make you scream, you bitch, I'm going to make you wish you were never born. Whatever they paid you, it wasn't enough."

She backed against one of the shelves, tripping over the leg of the worktable, almost falling on top of the covered trap door in the corner. Irons followed, feeling that beautiful, exciting power course through him, feeling excited by her helplessness.

"Please, you don't want to do this, I'm not who you think I am!"

Her pathetic entreaties made him stop and laugh, wanting to add to her terror, wanting for her to know that his control was absolute. She was wedged be-tween a trophy shelf and the covered pit, and Irons stayed a safe distance away, enjoying the look in her glistening, overbright eyes - the panic of a trapped animal, a soft, warm, powerless animal of tender, pliable flesh... Irons licked his lips, his hungry gaze traveling over her limber, smooth, cowering form. Another trophy, another body to transform... and it was time to get down to business, to...

"Graaagh!" What the...

The board that covered the subbasement entrance flew into the air, splitting with a tremendous crack, one jagged piece hitting Irons's hip. He staggered, not understanding - he was in control and yet something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Something wrapped around his ankle, something that squeezed so tight he heard the bone being crushed, felt incredible, spiking pain travel up his leg...... and he locked gazes with the girl, her eyes bright with a new terror, and in that instant of contact, of clarity, he wanted to teil her so much, wanted to tell her that he was a good man, a man who'd never deserved any of what had happened to him...... and the vise-like grip jerked, and Irons was falling, dropping the gun, pulled into the pit by the screaming and the pain and the beast that waited for him below.

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