City Of The Dead

Chapter Twenty-Three

Leon was wearing a white undershirt beneath his uniform; Ada tore it into strips and bandaged his arm with it, fashioning a kind of sling for him to wear once she'd slipped his ruined shirt back on. He'd lost enough blood to be dazed, almost helpless, and Ada used his mild shock to explain herself as she tended to him, feeling mildly shocked herself by the complex emotions that warred inside of her.
"... and I thought she looked familiar. I thought I'd met her through John, and I almost caught up to her, but she must have slipped past me. I got lost in the tunnels, trying to find my way back..."
Nothing of truth, but Leon didn't seem to notice, just as he didn't seem to notice the gentle, careful way she touched him, or the very slight tremor in her voice as she apologized for a third time, for leaving him behind.
He saved my life. Again. And all I have to give him in return are lies, calculated deceit in exchange for his selflessness...
Something had changed for her when he'd taken the bullet instead of her, and she didn't know how to change it back. Even worse, she didn't know that she wanted to change it back. It was like the birth of a new feeling, some emotion that she couldn't name but that seemed to fill her up; it was unsettling, uncomfort- able - and yet somehow, not altogether unpleasant. His clever solution to the problem of the nearly invincible crocodile - the creature that she'd only just been able to hold at bay, in spite of her best efforts - had made the unnamed feeling even stron- ger. The hole in his arm was only a flesh wound, but from the streaks of fresh blood across his smooth chest and stomach, she knew that it had been hurting bad - draining him, killing him as he'd worked to save her ass.
Get rid of him now, her mind hissed, leave him, don't let this affect the job - the job, Ada, the mission. Your life.
She knew it was what she had to do, that it was the only thing to do, but when he was fixed up as best as she could manage, and her pathetic cover story had been told, she conveniently forgot to listen to herself. Ada helped him to his feet and led him away from the gut-splattered scene of the monster reptile's demise, spouting off some nonsense about having found what looked like an exit when she'd been lost. Annette Birkin was gone; as soon as Leon had led the crocodile out of the dump, she'd scaled the ladder and checked - and seen that Annette had retained enough sense to start up the fans and lower the bridge before running, effectively blowing Ada's other op- tions for escape. The woman was possibly psychotic, but not a moron - and although she'd been wrong about Ada's source of purpose, she'd been dead on as to the purpose itself. To wrap the mission, Ada would have to get to the lab as quickly as she could, before Annette could do anything... final - and Leon, si- lent and stumbling Leon, would add to her time by half.
Drop him! Lose the weight, you're not a nursemaid, for Chrissake, this isn't you, Ada... "I'm thirsty," Leon whispered, his breath warm across her neck. She looked up into his gore-stained, blinking face and found that the voice inside was easier to ignore this time. She'd have to leave him, of course, in the end there would have to be a parting of the ways... but not yet. "Then we'll have to find you some water," she said, and steered him gently in the direction she needed to go.
Sherry woke up in the dark, a terrible, bitter taste in her mouth, a river of cold gunk tugging at her clothes. There was a rumbling sound all around her, a sound like the sky was falling, and for a second, she couldn't remember what had happened or where she was -
- and when she realized that she couldn't move, she panicked. The thundering sound was fading, fading and then gone, but she was stuck in some awful stinking river, pressed against cold, wet hardness, and she was alone. She opened her mouth to scream - and then re- membered the screaming monster, the monster and then the giant bald man, and then Claire. Remember- ing Claire stopped her from screaming; somehow, the image of her was like a soothing touch, easing through the blind terror and allowing her to think.
Got sucked into a drain hole, and now I'm... some-where else, and screaming won't help.
It was a brave thought, a strong thought, and it made her feel better to think it. She pushed herself away from the hardness at her back, treading the dark water, and discovered that she wasn't stuck at all; she had been up against a row of bars or openings in the rock, and the force of the current had held her there, held her, and probably saved her from drowning. The disgusting goop was flowing around her, tinkling and burbling like a regular old stream, not nearly as strong as before - and the bad taste in her mouth meant that she must have swallowed some of it... Thinking that opened up the rest of her memory. She'd been floating along and then had gotten twisted somehow, and had gulped some of the horrible, chemical-tasting liquid and freaked out - passed out, she thought. At least the noise had stopped, whatever that had been, a sound like a moving train, maybe, or a giant truck, roaring away... and now that she was more awake, she realized that she could see. Not very much, but enough to know that she was in a big room filled with water, and there was a tiny, feeble shaft of light coming down from high above.
There has to be a way out. Somebody built this place, they had to have a way out...
Sherry swam a little farther into the big room, and kicking, she felt the toes of her shoes glance off against something hard. Something hard and flat. Feeling stupid for not thinking of it already, she took a deep breath, lowered her legs and stood up. The water was all the way up to her shoulders, but she could stand.
The last traces of panic slipped away as she stood in the middle of the room, turning slowly, her eyes finally getting the most from the weak light and saw the ladder shape against the far wall. She was still scared, no question, but the sight of the shadowy rungs meant she'd found the way out. Sherry lifted her feet and paddled toward the ladder, proud of how she was handling herself.
No screaming, no crying. Just like Claire said. Strong.
She reached the ladder and pulled her knees up to the bottom rung, a few inches above the surface. She got her feet beneath her and started to climb, grimac- ing at the thick, slimy feel of the metal bars beneath her pruned fingers. The ladder seemed to go on forever, and when she risked a look down to see how high she'd gone, she could only see a tiny, shimmering patch of the water's lapping top where the light hit it directly. She could see the source of the light, too - a narrow slit in the ceiling, not much higher than where she was.
Almost to the top. And if I fall, I won't get hurt. There's nothing to be scared of.
Sherry swallowed heavily, willing the thought to be true, and looked up again. A few more rungs, and when she reached up for the next, her hand touched a bumpy metal ceiling. She felt a burst of accomplishment, pushing at it with one hand - and it didn't move. Not at all. "Shit," she whispered, but it didn't sound annoyed, the way she'd hoped; the word sounded small and lonely, almost like a plea. Sherry hooked an elbow through the rung she was holding, touched her pendant for luck, and tried again, really pushing this time. Straining with all of her might, she thought she felt it give, just a little, but not anywhere near enough. She lowered her hand, cursing silently this time; she was trapped. For several minutes she didn't move, not wanting to go back down into the water, not wanting to believe that she really was stuck, but her arms were getting tired, and she didn't want to jump, either. Finally, she started down, much more slowly than she'd come up. Each step lower was like admitting defeat. She was perhaps a third of the way back to the water when she heard the footsteps overhead - a light thumping at first, more of a vibration than anything, but then quickly redefined into separate steps, getting louder. Then closer and getting louder still, ap-proaching the top of the pit where she'd awakened. Sherry gave about a second's thought to ignoring
the footsteps and then scrambled up the ladder, deciding that it was worth the risk; it might not be Claire, or even anyone who meant her well, but it could be her only chance at escape. She started shouting before she got back to the top.
"Hello! Help, can you hear me? Hello, hello!"
The footsteps seemed to pause, and as she reached the ceiling again, still calling out, she hit the metal several times with her fist.
"Hello, hello, hello!"
Another smack with her decidedly sore hand and suddenly she was hitting air, and a blinding light was in her face.
"Sherry! Oh, my God, sweetie, I'm so glad you're okay!"
Claire, it was Claire, and Sherry couldn't see her but was nearly overwhelmed with delight at the sound of her voice. Strong, warm hands helped her up, warm, damp arms were hugging her tightly. Sherry blinked and squinted, and started to be able to make out the features of a vast room through the brilliant white haze. "How did you know it was me?" Claire asked, still holding her.
"Didn't. But I couldn't get out by myself, and I heard walking..."
Sherry looked around at the big room that Claire had pulled her into, feeling stunned amazement that Claire had heard her at all. The room was huge, spanned by a series of thin metal catwalks laid out in diagonals and the section of floor that she'd comeout of was at the farthest corner of the darkest part of the room, the panel that Claire had lifted only a couple of feet across.
Man. If I hadn 't knocked, or if she'd been going any faster... "I'm very glad it's you," Sherry said firmly, and Claire grinned, looking just as happy and amazed as Sherry felt. Claire knelt in front of her, her smile fading a little.
"Sherry - I saw your mom. She's okay, she's alive..." "Where? Where is she?" Sherry blurted, excited bythe news, but feeling a kind of nervous uncertaintytensing her muscles suddenly, making it hard to breathe. She looked into Claire's worried gray eyes, and saw that she was thinking about lying again - that she was trying to figure out the best way to tell her something unpleasant. Even a few hours ago, Sherry might have let her do it, too...
... but not anymore. Strong and brave we have to be... "Tell me, Claire. Tell me the truth." Claire sighed, shaking her head. "I don't know where she went. She was scared of me, Sherry. I think she thought I was someone else, someone bad or crazy. She ran away from me, but I'm pretty sure she came this way, and I was trying to find her again when I heard you calling."
Sherry nodded slowly, struggling to accept the idea that her mother had been acting weird - weird enough for Claire to try and sugar-coat it. "And you think she came in here?" Sherry asked finally.
"I can't be positive. I also ran into this cop, Leon, before I saw your mother; I met him when I first got to the city, and he was in one of the tunnels I went through after you disappeared. He was hurt, he couldn't come with me to look for you - so after your mom took off, I went back to get him, but he was gone." "Dead?" Claire shook her head. "Nope. Just gone - so I backtracked, and as far as I can tell, this is the only way your mom could have gone. But like I said, I'm not sure..."
She hesitated, frowning, gazing at Sherry thought- fully. "Did your mom ever tell you about something called the G-Virus?"G-Virus? I don't think so." "Did she ever give you anything to hold onto, like a little glass container, something like that?" Sherry frowned back at her. "No, nothing. Why?"Claire stood up, putting her hand on Sherry'sshoulder and shrugging at the same time. "It's not really important."
Sherry narrowed her eyes, and Claire smiled again.
"Really. Come on, let's see if we can figure out where your mom went. I bet she's looking for you."
Sherry let Claire lead the way, wondering why she was suddenly sure - almost certain, in fact - that Claire didn't believe what she was saying... and wondering why she couldn't find it in herself to ask any more questions about it.
The factory machine lift, like the tram, was exactly where Annette had left it. The margin had surely tightened, but she was still ahead of the spies, of Ada Wong and her ragged little friend...
... lies, telling me lies like they all tell lies, as if losing William, suffering such pain and loss isn't enough to shame them...
She fumbled the control key out of her torn lab coat pocket, leaning heavily against the mounted controls as she inserted the key and turned it. Her shaking fingers touched the activation switch and a trail of lights appeared on the console, too bright even in the moon-filled darkness. Cool autumn air brushed over her aching body, a friendly, secret wind that smelled like fire and disease...
... like Halloween, like bonfires in the dark when they brought out their dead, burning the pestilent flesh of the plague-riddled bodies...
Four squealing, blaring honks sounded into the night sky, the massive elevator room telling her that it was time to go. Annette staggered up the gray and yellow steps, unable to remember what she'd been thinking about before. It was time to go, and she was so, so tired. How long had it been since she'd slept? She couldn't remember that, either.
Hit my head, yes? Or just sleepy, may haps...
She'd been exhausted before, but the relentless pain of her injuries had sent her to some delirious place that she'd never imagined could exist. Her thoughts came in spiraling, uneasy bursts of feeling that she couldn't seem to sort through, at least not to her satisfaction; she knew what had to be done - the triggering system, the subway gate opening, the hiding in the shadows and waiting to heal, but the rest had become some strange, disjointed grouping of free association, as if she'd taken some drug that had overloaded her senses, and would only let her think a bit at a time. It was almost over. That was something she could hold on to, one of the only constants in her muddled mind. A positive and somehow magical phrase that she could still see, no matter how blind she became. On her way through the factory, she'd coughed and coughed and then vomited from the pain a thin and acidic string of bile that had made dark bubbles burst in front of her eyes, the darkness staying for so long that she thought she might actually lose her sight -
- it's almost over.
Clutching the thought like a lost love, she found the latch to the metal room and went inside. The controls, pushed. The movement and sound of movement engulfing her as she lay across one soft metal bench and closed her eyes. A few moments of rest, and it was almost over... Annette sank into the dark, the humming motors lulling her into a deep and instant sleep. She was going down, her muscles relaxing, her aches and miseries loosening their hold - and for some endless reach of time, she found a silence...
... until a howling, terrible scream knifed into her darkness, a shriek of such fury and pain that it spoke for her heart, and she jerked back to life, panting and afraid...
... and then realized what had snapped her out of her dreamless sleep, and her thoughts came together, giving her one more clear and constant thing to hold on to. It was William. William had come home, he had followed her and Umbrella would have nothing, because the thing that had been her husband had come back into the blast radius. The scream sounded again, this time echoing away into one of the lab's many secret places as the lift went down and down. Annette closed her eyes again, the new thought joining her lost love from before, the two of them together making her happy at last.
William has come home. It's almost over.
The third followed naturally, added as she slipped back into the silence, knowing that she had to get up too soon, to begin the final journey. When the lift stopped, she'd wake up and be ready.
Umbrella will suffer for what they've done - and everybody dies at the very end.
She smiled, and fell asleep, dreaming of William.