A border town inside Stonewall County.
It had been a quiet place once, but today the shriek of military truck engines and the chop of helicopter rotors had shredded that peace to nothing. The Army and National Guard had thrown up long cordons around the town's perimeter, officially to establish a refugee intake center, though in practice every soldier was armed to the teeth, interrogating each survivor who'd crawled out of Raccoon City.
On the town's edge stood an abandoned motel called the Old George.
No lights were on inside. Every window had been sealed with heavy curtains or nailed shut with boards.
The two groups who'd escaped by helicopter and by train had linked up in this hidden corner against all odds, thanks to the spy contact signals Ada had left behind and Carlos's counter-surveillance expertise.
They all understood the stakes. Carrying Umbrella's incriminating evidence, the vaccine, and two extremely sensitive children, if they fell into the hands of those military units on the perimeter, their fate would be worse than anything Raccoon City had dealt them.
Second floor of the motel, a dead-angle in the corridor's shadows.
Jill Valentine leaned alone against the wooden railing, her silhouette hidden by the darkness. Her signature blue tube top and skirt were caked with dried blood, and a thick wrap of white bandages circled her right side.
She held a cup of cold black coffee, her gaze reaching past the town's jumbled rooftops, fixed on the south.
A few hours ago, a man-made sun had risen there.
Even across a hundred-plus kilometers, the dull shockwave had set the motel's window glass moaning. Everyone had dissolved into panic. Only Jill had stayed where she was, watching that mushroom cloud, her fingers tightening around the railing without her realizing it.
Instinct told her the nuke wouldn't kill that monster of a man.
He'd said he would come find her. So she waited.
...
Meanwhile, in the motel's spacious, gutted lobby on the first floor.
The air reeked of disinfectant and blood, but every face in the room carried the same look of bone-deep exhaustion and relief at simply being alive.
In one corner, Annette Birkin held Sherry tight, the daughter she'd thought she'd lost, tears running silently down her face. Claire sat beside them, carefully draping a clean jacket over Sherry's shoulders.
On a nearby couch, Dr. Bard clutched the metal case containing the vaccine and the evidence as if it were his own heart. The journalist Ben Bertolucci was scribbling furiously in his notebook by the dim glow of a flashlight, his hand still trembling. Katherine huddled in the shadows across from him, wrapped in an old blanket, her eyes still haunted by the city they'd left behind.
Flanking the lobby windows, Marvin and Tyrell stood with rifles raised, one on each side, watching the military searchlights that occasionally swept the street outside.
"Trade you a bandage, Carlos." Leon sat bare-chested, tossing a roll of gauze to the U.B.C.S. mercenary across from him.
Carlos bit the wrapping open and wound it expertly around the through-and-through in his left arm. He glanced at the wound on Leon's shoulder where shrapnel had just been dug out and dropped his voice. "What happened down there when you guys broke out from the station? How did Ryan handle those two things?"
Leon went quiet for a moment. In his mind he saw the man holding a Gatling gun one-handed, planted in the train car doorway, hosing fire into the dark.
"He didn't fall back." There was something in Leon's voice he couldn't quite hide, something close to awe. "He shoved us onto the train and held off Nemesis and William by himself. What about you? How'd it go at the hospital?"
"He charged straight into three heavy machine guns." Carlos took a deep breath and let out a dry laugh. "Caught a rifle round square in the chest, didn't even flinch, and picked off every sniper on the other side with headshots. Leon, if Umbrella's executives knew what kind of monster they've pissed off, they'd better pray they can hide at the center of the earth."
Deep in the lobby's shadows.
Ada Wong leaned against the wall, her red dress flickering in and out of the dark. She toyed with the waterproof pouch Ryan had pressed into her hands on the cliff's edge, the one holding the G-Virus sample and NEST's core data.
She could have taken it all and vanished, completed Wesker's assignment. But she hadn't. She'd stayed in this room full of cops and mercenaries, her gaze drifting toward the door now and then, like she was waiting for some unreasonable creditor to come collect.
Across the room, Robert Kendo sat in a plastic chair.
Becky, seated in front of him, no longer looked pale at all. If anything, her complexion had a flush of health that was almost uncanny. The dark veins that had crept up her neck had faded completely, and the speed of her recovery was enough to leave even Dr. Bard stunned.
"Daddy." Becky looked up, curiosity flickering in her wide eyes. "Where's that man? The one who... rescued me from the hospital. How come he's not here yet?"
Kendo froze. His mouth opened, and his rough hands squeezed the hem of his shirt.
"He's..." Kendo's eyes reddened slightly, his voice gone hoarse. "He's a hero, Becky. The kind that... nothing in this world can beat. He'll come back. I know he will."
...
Out on the desolate interstate, pale gray fallout dust drifted on the wind.
The hum of an engine.
A black SUV coated in ash killed its headlights five kilometers from the town.
Behind the wheel, Ryan rested one hand on the steering wheel, his gaze calm and steady on the flashing lights of the military roadblock ahead.
He didn't try to punch through. Instead he yanked the wheel hard.
The SUV tore through a roadside chain-link fence and cut straight into the pathless scrubland beyond.
Wide off-road tires rolled over brush and gravel in the dark. Using the night and the blasted terrain as cover, Ryan slipped past the searchlights and patrols without a sound, a ghost skimming the town's edge, pushing inward.
...
Ten p.m. The edge of town.
Second floor of the Old George, and Jill still hadn't moved from her spot against the railing. The wound in her right side throbbed dully, but she hadn't spared a thought for going back inside to redress it.
Then, from the scrubland behind the motel, came the faintest sound of tires rolling over sand.
Against the background roar of military trucks it was almost nothing, but Jill's heart skipped a beat.
She whipped around, her eyes locking onto the shadows in the alley behind the motel.
A black SUV caked in pale dust, its windshield webbed with cracks, lights off, glided out of the wasteland like a phantom and rolled to a stop in the blind spot directly below.
The door pushed open from inside.
A leg in black tactical pants stepped down, the combat boot pressing into the sand with a muffled crunch.
Then the figure in the torn black shirt climbed out of the cab.
He shut the door behind him, the motion so quiet it made no sound at all.
He ignored the sudden clatter of weapons being racked in the lobby below and tilted his head up. Those calm, unreadable eyes found their way through the second-floor railing and met Jill's gaze with precision.
Ryan flicked a speck of nonexistent dust from his cuff, one corner of his mouth lifting in that familiar, careless half-smile.
"This motel you picked," he said, his voice pitched low but carrying cleanly to the second floor, "doesn't exactly scream five stars."
Behind the railing, the tension Jill had held in her shoulders all day finally broke.
Her eyes went red in an instant, but she forced out a smile, a brilliant one. Without a word, she braced one hand on the wooden railing, ignored the pain tearing through her right side, vaulted over the second-floor balcony, landed clean, and ran straight for him.
[Read 50+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]