The pounding on the door kept going. Dull, rhythmic, each hit landing somewhere behind his ribs.
Ryan turned from the entrance and started up the stairs. Behind him came the shuffle of feet: Leon supporting Marvin, Claire holding Sherry's hand, Ben bringing up the rear with his pistol white-knuckled in both fists. Six people on groaning wooden steps, climbing single file.
The second floor was darker than the foyer.
Closed doors lined both sides of the corridor, each bearing a tarnished brass plate: Ward A. Ward B. Medical Office. At the far end, an iron door. Faint light bled through the gap beneath it.
"Someone's in there?" Leon kept his voice low.
Ryan raised a hand. Everyone stopped.
His vision slid through the iron door. A cramped office on the other side. Filing cabinets against the wall, a candle guttering on a desk. A young girl was curled under that desk, hands clamped over her mouth, shaking. Blonde. Private school uniform. Sixteen, maybe seventeen.
He dropped the X-ray and walked forward. At the iron door he knocked three times. The breathing on the other side cut out instantly.
"We're survivors." Quiet, steady. "Not monsters."
Three seconds of silence.
The door cracked open. A single blue eye, wide with terror, looked him up and down. It darted past him to Marvin and his bleeding arm, to Claire with a child pressed against her side, to Leon's battered face, to Ben's bloodless one.
The gap widened. The girl leaned out, blonde hair tangled, dust on her cheeks. Pretty underneath it all. Her gaze fixed on Leon, and her voice came out shaking. "Are you police?"
"Close enough." Leon stepped forward, angling the badge on his uniform into the candlelight. "Raccoon City Police Department. Leon Kennedy."
The girl's eyes lit up. She wrenched the door open and lunged, grabbing Leon's arm hard enough to leave marks. "Police! Oh God, finally. My father's the mayor. You have to get me out of here!"
Leon blinked. "The mayor?"
"Michael Warren!" Her voice cracked. "My name is Katherine Warren. My father is the mayor of Raccoon City!"
Ryan studied her face for a beat.
Michael Warren. The mayor who'd been in Umbrella's pocket, who'd ended up dead in his own home. His daughter was supposed to have died at Irons' hands. But Irons was already dead, and here she was.
"How'd you end up here?" he said.
Katherine released Leon and stepped back. Fear flickered across her face. "I was investigating my father."
"Investigating him?"
"He's been close with Umbrella people." She bit her lip. "A few months ago, things started feeling wrong. He'd leave in the middle of the night. New files kept showing up in his study, sealed envelopes, cash. A lot of cash. I snuck a look at his papers once. They mentioned this orphanage. Something about experiments on children."
She paused. Her eyes went red. "I didn't believe he'd do something like that. I wanted to find proof he was innocent. So when the outbreak hit, I didn't evacuate with him. I came here on my own."
"And got trapped," Claire said.
Katherine nodded. "Two days. Those things are everywhere outside. I couldn't leave."
Ryan said nothing. His gaze moved past her into the office. The filing cabinet hung half open, stuffed with yellowed folders. On the desk beside the candle lay several notebooks, spread open, the handwriting messy but clearly investigative notes.
"You found all this?"
Katherine followed his eyes and nodded. "The archive room is at the back of the first floor. I slipped in during the chaos and pulled what I could. There was too much to carry, so I grabbed what looked important and brought it upstairs."
She crossed to the desk, picked up a notebook, and handed it to him.
Ryan opened it.
Yellowed pages. Row after row of handwritten entries.
March 12, 1990. Received adapter ARK-M-004. Female, age 7. Admission no. ST-004. Blood test positive. ERI value 7.8. Transferred to underground observation ward.
September 4, 1990. ARK-M-004 organ failure. Deceased. Remains transferred to Umbrella Research Center.
January 7, 1991. Received adapter ARK-M-007. Male, age 6. Admission no. ST-007. Blood test positive. ERI value 7.5. Transferred to underground observation ward.
July 19, 1991. ARK-M-007 organ failure. Deceased. Remains transferred...
Page after page. The same format, the same ending.
1990 to 1998. Eight years. Names, serial numbers, ages, admission dates, death dates. Some entries were only a few lines long: organ failure within days of arrival. Others lasted months. The longest had survived two years.
Close to a hundred names.
Ryan turned to the middle of the notebook. His fingers stopped.
September 2, 1991. Received adapter ARK-M-089. Male, age 8. Admission no. ST-089. Blood test positive. ERI value 8.1. Transferred to G-Virus adaptation observation group.
September 15, 1991. G-Virus Phase 1 injection. Test subject exhibiting rejection response. Continuous monitoring.
October 3, 1991. G-Virus Phase 2 injection. Test subject developing adaptive response. Neutralizing factor activity significantly elevated.
January 7, 1992. Test subject designation changed to G-001. Transferred to deep underground facility. Custody transferred directly to Dr. Birkin.
Note: G-001 is currently the only child adapter to retain full cognitive function following G-Virus injection. Recommended as candidate for ultimate G-Virus carrier protocol.
G-Virus adapter.
Ryan's eyes narrowed.
He kept turning pages.
April 17, 1996. G-001 missing. Suspected escape. Purge protocol initiated.
May 1996. Purge protocol complete. Target confirmed deceased.
The same boy. But now with more detail: G-Virus injection, cognitive function intact, deep underground facility.
"This kid." He looked up at Katherine. "Is there anything else on him?"
She shook her head. "That's all the archives had. But I found something else."
She pulled a photograph from the desk drawer and held it out.
Black and white, slightly blurred. A thin boy, seven or eight years old. Dark hair. Cold eyes that stared into the lens with an expression no child should wear. On the back, in pencil:
G-001 1991.9
"His intake photo," Katherine said. "But the file says he's dead."
Ryan stared at the photograph without speaking.
Ben leaned over for a look. His brow creased. "That kid... I think I've seen him."
Everyone turned.
Ben scratched his head, working through the memory. "A few months back, when I was investigating Umbrella, I got a shot of someone coming out a back entrance of their research facility. Young guy, dressed plain, but the way he moved was off. Didn't think much of it at the time, and I lost the photo later. But his profile..." He tapped the picture. "Looked like this kid. Older, though. He'd be fifteen or sixteen now."
The office went quiet.
"You're saying he's alive?" Claire said softly.
"I don't know." Ben shook his head. "Just a resemblance."
Ryan slipped the photo into his pocket, then turned to the filing cabinet. He pulled the door wide. Folders packed tight, arranged by year, neat as a library. He drew out several of the most recent ones and skimmed.
July 1998. ARK Plan Quarterly Brief. TOP SECRET / FOR SPENCER'S EYES ONLY.
Total adapters: 347.Deceased/decommissioned: 329.Surviving: 18 (including G-Virus adaptation group transferred to deep underground facility).
Current priority target: ARK-M-092. Female, age 8. Admission no. ST-092. Blood test positive. ERI value 9.7. Designated first-priority candidate for the Elpis Project.
Note: Subject 092 possesses the highest ERI value of all adapters on record. Blood neutralizing factor activity exceeds historical benchmarks by 47%. Recommend initiating carrier experiment immediately.
Elpis Project: Latest Update. FOR MR. SPENCER ONLY.
Elpis is the ultimate bioweapon, capable of controlling the consciousness of others, granting its user godhood. Project on track. First live-subject experiment projected for 1999.
Progress: Antibody purification process 83% complete. Final verification requires Subject 092 to reach maturation.
Addendum, per Mr. Spencer's instructions: "Tell them the answers they want to hear. Show them the documents they want to see. Elpis is Pandora's box, but what lies at the bottom... only I know what that is."
Ryan's gaze hung on those lines.
An ultimate bioweapon. Consciousness control.
He looked at the red TOP SECRET stamp on the folder, Spencer's name printed beneath it, and something clicked into place.
He stuffed the file into his pack and headed for the door.
"Wait." Katherine caught him. "You're just leaving? No explanation?"
He glanced back. "Explain what?"
"What those files are about. Who that boy is. What Elpis is."
Ryan was quiet for a moment.
"I don't know," he said. "What's written in a file isn't necessarily the truth."
It was a strange thing to say. Katherine opened her mouth, then closed it. She didn't press further.
They filed out of the office and back down the stairs.
Ryan led. His X-ray vision stayed on. Passing through the first-floor foyer, he stopped mid-stride.
His sight punched through the floorboards. Layer after layer.
Sublevel one. A narrow staircase choked with dust.
Sublevel two. A rusted iron door. The sign read: EXPERIMENTAL ZONE. UNAUTHORIZED ENTRY PROHIBITED.
Sublevel three.
His pupils tightened.
Sublevel three was a vast circular chamber. At its center stood a dozen cultivation pods, glass casings webbed with cracks, the nutrient fluid long since dried to nothing. Inside every pod, a small skeleton lay curled. Children's bones.
Instruments crowded the space around the pods, wall to wall. Photographs papered the walls: children's faces, each one labeled with a number and a date. Some of those numbers he'd just read in the notebook. 004. 007. 015. 022. The organ failure batch.
At the deepest point sat a massive metal container shaped like a coffin. Tubes and gauges covered its surface, every indicator light dead. Ryan's vision cut through the metal shell. Empty inside. But thin scratches scored the interior walls, old and deliberate.
Someone had clawed their way out.
He stood still. For half a second, he forgot to breathe.
G-001. G-Virus adapter. The only child to keep his mind after injection.
The boy who'd crawled out of sublevel three.
The boy whose file read Purge protocol complete but who might still be walking around.
If he was alive, he'd be fifteen or sixteen now.
Ben's story fit.
Ryan paused, then swept his gaze across the group. "From here on, nobody goes anywhere alone."
"Why?" Leon said.
Ryan didn't answer.
His hand pressed against the pocket where the photograph sat.
The pencil scrawl on the back burned in his mind.
G-001 1991.9
Outside, from somewhere down the street, came a heavy footfall. Then another. Slow, grinding, like something enormous dragging itself closer.
Ryan's head snapped up. His vision lanced through the front door, through the dark, and fifty meters out a massive shape was emerging from the rubble. Each step crushed the gravel beneath it. Each stride brought it closer to the orphanage.
The Tyrant. It had found them again.
He glanced back at Sherry. The girl was tucked against Claire's side, small fingers wrapped around the rabbit pendant at her neck, oblivious.
He didn't know how the Tyrant had tracked them here.
But he knew they weren't running from this one.
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