"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.