The corridor was pitch black. Emergency lights cast long green shadows across the floor from far down the hall. Ryan moved without a sound, his vision spread wide, tracking every shambling zombie and dark corner along the route. No shots fired. He slipped between cover points, threading past clusters of infected without so much as a scuff on the tile.
Three minutes. That's all it took to reach the women's restroom on the west side.
The door sat slightly ajar. Dead silence inside, the breathing so faint it barely registered. Ryan could see her clearly: Sherry, curled up behind the toilet tank in the last stall, both hands clamped over her mouth, eyes brimming with tears she refused to let fall. Terrified that any sound would bring the monsters, or the crazed fat cop who'd been hunting her.
He eased the door open, kept his voice low and gentle. "Sherry? It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm here to get you out."
The breathing stopped.
She pressed harder into the wall, shaking worse now. She'd been hiding in this station for a full day. Watched coworkers turn into things that bit and clawed. Watched Irons smash at doors trying to find her. Too much blood. Too much horror. She didn't trust strangers anymore.
Ryan stayed where he was. Didn't take a step closer.
"I know you're looking for your mom and dad. I know you're hiding from a fat man in a police uniform, and from the things outside that bite. Come with me. I can keep you safe. Nobody's going to hurt you."
Every wall she'd built collapsed at once.
No one had ever named her fears so precisely. No one in this nightmare of a station had ever told her they'd protect her.
The stall door cracked open.
Two wet eyes peered out at him. He held a gun, but it wasn't pointed at her. His expression was calm, no madness behind it, no cruelty. He looked nothing like anyone else she'd encountered in here.
"You... you really won't hurt me?" Barely a whisper, thick with tears.
"I promise." He nodded and held out his hand. "Come on. We'll find somewhere safe, and when things settle down, I'll help you find your parents."
Sherry stared at his outstretched hand. Hesitated a few seconds. Then stepped out of the stall. Her fingers were ice-cold and trembling when they settled into his palm. Then she pulled back, reached up to her neck, and unclasped a thin silver chain. The pendant was a small silver rabbit, its ears worn shiny from years against her skin.
"This... is for you." She held it out to him, voice still timid but dead serious. "Mom said I can't lose it. That something really important is inside, and I have to keep it hidden. But now... I'm giving it to you. You're stronger than me. You'll keep it safe, and you'll keep me safe too. Right?"
Ryan looked at the pendant, then at the trust in her eyes, and felt the weight of it.
He took it. When his fingertip traced the rabbit's outline, he felt something hard inside, rice-grain-sized, sealed flush within the metal. He understood immediately. William Birkin's work. The G-Virus sample hidden in his daughter's necklace. The most secret protection imaginable, and a last resort.
He said nothing about it. He hung the pendant back around Sherry's neck and rested a hand gently on top of her head. "It's yours. I'll protect you and it both."
She blinked, then nodded hard and grabbed his hand again. Tighter this time. Like he was the only solid thing left in the world.
Ryan closed his grip around her small fingers, tucked her against his side, and headed for the door.
One step into the corridor. Rapid footsteps from the far end, and the sharp click of a revolver's hammer being thumbed back.
Irons barreled around the corner. The stench of liquor and sweat hit before he did. A large-caliber revolver shook in his grip, eyes glassy and wild. He spotted Sherry behind Ryan and his pupils contracted. The gun came up.
"Give me the girl."
His voice was hoarse and slurred, flat menace from a man caught in the act.
Sherry went rigid and shrank behind Ryan, both hands flying to the rabbit pendant at her throat.
Ryan didn't break stride. Didn't change expression. His left hand stayed on Sherry's head, keeping her calm. The Desert Eagle in his right drifted up, casual, muzzle leveled in Irons' direction.
To him, this police chief propped up by Umbrella's money was no different from any zombie shambling through the halls. One more obstacle to clear.
Irons snapped. His finger jerked the trigger.
The shot cracked through the empty corridor. The bullet flew straight at Ryan's chest.
He didn't bother with a real dodge. Half a step to the side with Sherry in tow. The round grazed his arm and punched into the wall behind him, spraying concrete dust. In the same fraction of a second, his own gun spoke.
One clean report.
The bullet hit Irons' right wrist. Bone splintered under the gunshot's echo. The revolver tumbled from his hand and clattered on the tile. He staggered back half a step, face twisting, terror flooding the glassy eyes.
He couldn't process it. This unremarkable-looking kid had drawn and fired so fast the aiming motion was invisible.
Ryan kept walking, Sherry's hand in his, as if the shot had been nothing more than flicking lint off a sleeve.
Irons watched him close the distance. Survival instinct overpowered the madness. He spun to run.
The second shot came before he finished turning.
Just as calm, just as precise.
The round punched through his back and out his heart. Irons lurched forward two steps and crashed face-first onto the floor. Two twitches. Then still.
Start to finish, Ryan hadn't said a word to him. The revolver was still clattering to rest when he and Sherry were already past.
He glanced down at the girl, eyes still squeezed shut against his side, and softened his voice. "It's over. We're going."
Sherry cracked one eye open. Saw Irons motionless on the ground. Looked up at Ryan's unbothered face. The fear drained out of her. "Thank you," she whispered, grip still tight on his hand, the other hand guarding the pendant.
They'd barely gone two steps when shuffling footsteps rounded the corner behind them. Zombies drawn by the gunfire. Ryan frowned, shifted Sherry behind a fire extinguisher cabinet, raised the Desert Eagle, and dropped three in quick succession. Three headshots. Clean.
In the brief pause, he crouched to her level. "Sherry, can I borrow the pendant for a second? I'll hide it somewhere safer so it doesn't get lost if we run into more of those things. Okay?"
No hesitation. She unclasped it and put it in his hand. She knew. This man would protect her, and he'd protect what her mother had left behind.
Ryan turned the pendant over, fingertips searching the rabbit's back until he found a nearly invisible latch. A flick of his thumbnail and the rear casing popped open a sliver. Inside sat a sealed micro vial, the viscous liquid within it a pale green that caught the emergency light with an eerie sheen.
The G-Virus sample.
He'd already figured out how these micro-containers worked. He pinched the glass tube between two fingers, eased it free, then pulled a small shockproof metal case from the tactical pocket against his chest, opened it, set the vial inside, and snapped it shut. The case went into his innermost pocket, right next to the ARK Plan file.
He closed the empty rabbit pendant, fastened it back around Sherry's neck. "There. Now even if things get rough, it won't get lost."
Sherry touched the pendant, fully at ease, and nodded.
Ryan took her hand and headed for the basement level. Zombies kept coming, drawn by the earlier shots, stumbling out of side rooms and stairwells. He raised the Desert Eagle each time. Every round found a skull. Nothing got within ten feet. His breathing never changed. His movements stayed efficient and unhurried, like he was doing something he'd done a thousand times. The G-Virus sample sat secure in his innermost pocket. He knew exactly what it was: the key to understanding the Raccoon City disaster, and the one thing Umbrella would burn the city twice over to recover. Zero room for error.
A few minutes later, he reached the basement armory entrance with Sherry in tow.
Marvin, Leon, and Claire had finished restocking and stood guard by the door. When they saw Ryan walking back with a little girl, safe and sound, all three exhaled at once. Then they noticed he didn't have a speck of dust on him. His breathing hadn't even picked up.
"That's the girl? No trouble?" Claire moved to Sherry first, smoothing a gentle hand over the girl's hair, then looked at Ryan with open surprise. "We heard shots from down here. Figured you'd hit something serious."
"Nothing serious." Ryan's tone was flat. "Ran into Irons. Dealt with it."
All three froze.
Irons? The police chief who'd been barricaded in his bunker with a revolver? "Dealt with" just like that?
Leon pictured his own frantic scramble against a handful of zombies when they'd first breached the station, then looked at Ryan standing there like he'd taken a stroll to the vending machine. He had no words.
Marvin recovered first. A grin broke across his face. "Good. That bastard had it coming. Ryan, you did Raccoon City a favor."
Ryan didn't respond. His gaze drifted east, vision cutting through wall after wall until it settled on the hidden room behind the chief's office. Everything was still in there: the full record of Irons' dealings with Umbrella, and the complete files on the children from St. Theresa's Orphanage. And in his own pocket, pressed against his chest, lay the G-Virus sample that could shake Umbrella to its foundations, alongside the ARK Plan file he still hadn't fully decoded.