That was it. A hundred thousand dollars, and I was already watching my city, and keeping tabs on that rebellious little pack of troublemakers. Easy, easy money, and more to be made if everything went as planned. Except it was a trap, an Umbrella trap. . . . Irons had walked right into it, and that was when Umbrella had started plotting against him, using the information they’d gathered to seal his fate. How else could things have gone wrong so quickly? The S.T.A.R.S. had disappeared, then Birkin—and before he’d even had a chance to assess the situation, the attacks had started up again. He’d barely had time to seal Raccoon off before everything had fallen to shit. And all because I was helping a friend—for the greater good of the company, no less. Tragic. Irons stood up and walked slowly around the cut-ting table, idly tracing the dents and scars in the wood with his fingertips. Behind every mark was a story, a memory of accomplishment—but again, he could take no comfort. The cool, quiet atmosphere of the Sanctuary had always soothed him before, it was where he practiced his hobbies, where he was truly able to be himself—but it wasn’t his anymore. Noth-ing was. Umbrella had taken it from him, just as they’d taken his city. Was it so far-fetched to deduce that they’d unleashed their virus to get at him, to rob him of his power—and then sent that scantily clad brown-haired girl to rub his nose in it? Why else was she so attractive? They knew his weaknesses and were exploiting them, trying to keep him from retaining even a shred of dignity . . .
. . . and soon she’ll come for me, maybe still playing dumb, still trying to seduce me with her helplessness. An Umbrella assassin, a spy and an exploiter, that’s all she is, probably laughing at me behind that pretty face. . . .
Maybe the spill had been an accident; the last time they’d met, William Birkin had seemed unsteady, paranoid, and exhausted, and accidents happened even under the best of circumstances. But the rest was fact, there was no other explanation for how com-pletely Irons had been ruined. That girl was coming to get him, she was from Umbrella and she’d been sent to murder him. And she wouldn’t stop there, oh, no; she’d find Beverly and . . . and defile her somehow, just to make certain that nothing he cared about was left.
Irons looked around the small, softly lit room that had once been his, gazing wistfully at the well-used tools and furniture, the sweet, familiar smells of disinfectant and formaldehyde emanating from the rugged stone walls.
My Sanctuary. Mine.
He picked up the handgun that lay on his special cutting table, the VP70 that was still his, and felt a bitter smile curl his lips. His life was over, he knew that now. This whole affair had started with Birkin, and would end here, by his own hand. But not yet. The girl would come for him, and he would kill her before he said his final good-byes to Beverly, before he admitted his defeat by taking a bullet. But he would see to it that she understood his suffering first. For every torture he’d endured, the girl would pay, the bill settled through flesh and bone and as much pain as he could inflict.
He was going to die, but not alone. And not without hearing the girl scream in agony, creating a voice for the death of his dreams—a voice so clear and true that the echoes would reach even the black hearts of the company executives who had betrayed him. The S.T.A.R.S. office was empty, cluttered and cold and layered with dust, but Claire was reluctant to leave. After her stumbling, frightened flight through the body-strewn halls of the second floor, finding the place where her brother had spent his working days had left her feeling weak with relief. Mr. X hadn’t followed her, and although she was still anxious to help Sherry and find Leon, she found herself linger-ing, afraid to step back into the lifeless halls—and hesitant to leave the one place that felt like Chris. Where are you, big brother? And what am I going to do? Zombies, fire, death, your weird Chief Irons and that lost little girl—and just when I thought things couldn’t get any more insane, I get to face off with The Thing That Would Not Die, the freak to end all freaks. How am I going to get through this?
She sat at Chris’s desk, gazing at the small strip of black-and-white pictures that she’d found tucked in the bottom drawer; the four shots were of the two of them, grinning and making faces, a photo-booth memento of the week they’d spent in New York last Christmas. Finding the strip had made her want to cry at first, all of the fear and confusion she’d been holding back finally surging to the front at the sight of his well-loved smile—but the longer she’d looked at him, at the two of them laughing and having a good time, the better she’d started to feel. Not happy or even okay, and no less afraid of what was to come—just better. Calmer. Stronger. She loved him, and knew that wherever he was he loved her back—and that if the two of them had been able to survive the loss of both of their parents, to build lives for them-selves and share a silly Christmas vacation in spite of having no real home to go to, then they could cope with anything. She could cope.
Can and will. I’m going to find Sherry and Leon and, God willing, my brother—and we’re going to make it out of Raccoon.
The truth was, she didn’t really have any choice—but she needed to go through the process of accepting her lack of options before she could act. She’d heard before that real bravery wasn’t an absence of fear, it was accepting the fear and doing what was necessary anyway—and once she’d sat for a moment, thinking about Chris, she thought that she could do just that. Claire took a deep breath, slipped the photos into her vest, and pushed away from the desk. She didn’t know where Mr. X had been headed, but he hadn’t seemed like the waiting-around type; she would head back to Irons’s office and see if Sherry had come back—or Irons, for that matter. If X was still there, she could always run.
Besides, I should have searched his office, tried to find something about the S.T.A.R.S. There’s nothing here that can tell me anything. . . .
Standing, she took a last look around, wishing that the S.T.A.R.S. office had offered a little more in the way of supplies or information. All she’d found of any use was a discarded fanny pack in the desk behind Chris’s; according to the expired library card in one of the pouches, it had belonged to Jill Valentine. Claire had never met her, but Chris had mentioned her a couple of times, said she was good with a gun..
. . Too bad she didn’t leave one behind.
The team had obviously cleared out all of the important stuff after their suspension, although there were still a surprising number of personal items left around, framed pictures and coffee mugs and the like; she’d spotted Barry’s desk right away from the partly finished plastic gun model on top. Barry Burton was one of Chris’s closest friends, a huge, friendly bear of a man and a serious gun nut. Claire hoped that wherever Chris was, Barry was with him, watching his back. With a rocket launcher.