The helicopter passed overhead, close enough that we could see the weapons mounted on its undercarriage.
No markings. No rescue equipment. Just surveillance gear and firepower, circling the city like a vulture waiting for the feast.
"That's the third pass in ten minutes," One observed from our position behind an overturned delivery truck. "They're mapping the infected zones."
"For what?" Rain asked.
"Targeting." His voice was flat. "When containment fails completely, they'll have coordinates for whatever comes next."
We'd been moving through the commercial district for an hour, dodging Umbrella patrols and the infected with equal caution. The city was dying in layers—first the infrastructure, then the services, now the people themselves. Bodies lined the streets, some already rising, others lying still in positions that suggested they'd never get the chance.
My senses were a constant pressure, tracking threats that seemed to multiply with every passing minute. The infected were everywhere now, wandering in clusters that grew larger as more victims succumbed. Umbrella's kill teams moved between them with ruthless efficiency, eliminating anything that moved—infected or not.
"Contact ahead." I raised my fist, signaling a halt. "Multiple vehicles, stationary. Something's happening."
We approached carefully, using abandoned cars as cover. The street opened into a small plaza—fountain in the center, shops lining the edges, the kind of place where people had probably gathered for coffee and conversation in the world that used to exist.
Now it was an execution site.
Umbrella soldiers had established a perimeter, weapons trained inward on a group of civilians huddled near the fountain. Maybe twenty people—men, women, children—their hands raised in surrender, their faces showing the desperate hope of people who thought they'd finally been rescued.
A man in a suit stood apart from the soldiers, speaking into a radio with the casual authority of someone who'd never questioned his own decisions.
"—confirmed uninfected, yes, but they've witnessed containment operations. Protocol Seven applies. Acceptable losses for operational security."
Protocol Seven. I didn't know what that meant specifically, but the soldiers' response made it clear enough. They raised their weapons.
"We have to do something." Rain's hand was on her shotgun, her body tensed to move.
"We can't." The words tasted like ash. "There's too many of them. We engage, we die, and Matt stays lost."
"So we just watch?"
"We watch. We remember. And we make them pay later."
The first shots rang out. Clean, professional, the work of people who'd practiced this kind of killing until it became routine. The civilians fell—no screaming, no begging, just the sudden silence of lives ending.
One of the soldiers walked among the bodies, putting additional rounds into anyone who moved. Standard procedure. Can't leave witnesses.
Alice's hand found mine, squeezing hard enough to hurt. Her enhanced strength could have crushed bone, but she controlled it—channeled the rage into something she could manage without breaking.
"Monsters," she whispered. "They're monsters in human skin."
"Yes." I watched the soldiers begin loading bodies into a truck, erasing the evidence of their crime. "And we're going to burn them for it."
We retreated silently, taking side streets that led away from the plaza. The image stayed with me—twenty faces, twenty lives, erased because they'd seen too much. Added to the weight I was already carrying. Sarah. Lily. The people at the hospital, the church, every survivor we'd passed without stopping because stopping meant dying.
"We need to get off the streets," One said. "Find somewhere to regroup, plan our next move."
"There." Kaplan pointed to an alley that opened into a parking structure. "Multi-level, defensible, probably deserted."
We moved into the structure's shadows, climbing to the third level where we had sight lines on the surrounding streets. The city spread before us, burning and dying, while Umbrella's helicopters circled overhead like carrion birds.
"I used to work for them." One's voice was quiet, almost wondering. "I followed orders. I told myself it was necessary, that the mission mattered more than individual concerns."
"You didn't know what they were really doing."
"Didn't I?" He laughed—a hollow sound. "I knew enough. I just chose not to ask questions. Easier to follow orders than to think about what those orders meant."
"You're here now," I said. "Fighting against them. That counts."
"Does it? After everything I helped them do?"
"It has to." Rain moved to stand beside him, her shoulder brushing his. "Otherwise what's the point? We're all complicit somehow. Everyone who ever bought their products, used their services, looked the other way when the reports came out. The only thing that matters now is what we do next."
The radio crackled—Umbrella frequencies, which Kaplan had been monitoring since we left the safehouse. The voices that came through were professional, detached, discussing logistics for mass murder with the casual tone of people ordering lunch.
"—eastern sector cleared, moving to secondary targets—"
"—civilian gathering at St. Michael's Church, approximately two hundred contacts—"
"—initiate Protocol Seven, full sanitation—"
"No." The word escaped before I could stop it. "No, not the church."
"Cole?" Alice's hand was on my arm. "What is it?"
"The church. They're going to hit the church." Lily's face flashed through my mind—the stuffed bear, the huge eyes, the silence that came from seeing too much. "We have to warn them."
"We can't." One's voice was harsh with the same rage I was feeling. "We go back, we die. And we still can't stop what they're going to do."
"Then we watch more people die? More children?"
"We watch or we join them. Those are the only options."
The radio continued its litany of death—coordinates and protocols, sanitation orders and acceptable losses. Somewhere in the city, teams were converging on the church where we'd left Lily and the other survivors. People who'd trusted us to help them.
I gripped the radio hard enough that the plastic creaked. The rational part of my mind knew One was right—we couldn't save everyone, couldn't fight an army with five people and limited ammunition. But the part of me that was still human, that remembered Sarah's face as she walked into the garden, that part screamed against the calculus of survival.
"We keep moving," I said finally. "We find Matt. We get what we came for and we get out."
"And the church?"
"We remember. We add it to the list." I looked at the burning city, at the helicopters still circling, at the smoke rising from a dozen different fires. "And when this is over, when we're somewhere safe—we make sure the world knows what they did here."
It wasn't justice. It wasn't even revenge. It was just a promise—the only thing I could offer to the ghosts that were already starting to pile up.
We descended from the parking structure into streets that had become a killing ground. Umbrella patrols moved in grid patterns, hunting survivors with the same efficiency they'd use for infected. The line between the two had blurred—in their eyes, anyone still alive was a threat to be neutralized.
My senses guided us through the chaos, around the worst clusters, toward the industrial district where Matt might be held. Every step took us deeper into enemy territory, closer to the truth about what Umbrella was really doing here.
The truth was simple: they weren't containing an outbreak. They were erasing one. Every witness, every survivor, every piece of evidence—all of it scheduled for elimination. When this was over, Raccoon City would be a tragedy with no villains, a disaster with no explanation, a hundred thousand deaths with no one left to assign blame.
Unless we survived to tell the story.
"There." Kaplan pointed to a maintenance kiosk bolted to a warehouse wall. "Umbrella network access. My codes might still work."
"Do it." I positioned myself to watch the street while he worked. My senses mapped the surrounding blocks—scattered infected, a few civilians hiding in buildings, no organized Umbrella presence in our immediate vicinity.
We were getting closer. To Matt, to answers, to whatever came next.
The terminal flickered to life under Kaplan's fingers. He cycled through screens, his expression growing more focused with each query.
"Subject Addison, Matthew. Transfer order dated this morning." His voice tightened. "Nemesis Program compatibility positive. Transferred to Facility Omega."
Matt. They had him in something called the Nemesis Program. And based on everything I knew—everything I remembered from a life that wasn't supposed to be real—that was very, very bad.
"Where's this Facility Omega?" One asked.
Kaplan pulled up coordinates. "Four blocks northeast. Industrial complex converted for research."
Four blocks. Maybe ten minutes' travel through hostile territory. The distance between us and Matt, between rescue and failure, between hope and despair.
"Then that's where we go," I said. "Whatever it takes."
The team formed up around me—Rain on point, One covering rear, Alice at my side. Five people against a corporation that had already murdered thousands.
The odds were terrible. The plan was barely formed. And somewhere ahead, Matt was becoming something that would haunt my nightmares.
We moved anyway. Because some fights weren't about winning. They were about refusing to lose what made you human.
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