• Ada pushed past him, running ahead, shouting back to him. “Come on, there could be more coming!”
Leon took off after her, forced by Ada’s reckless behavior to put his shock on hold. He sprinted through the dark, jumping over the disturbed and gently rocking hunks of flesh, past the closed dead spider that would never have existed in the reality he’d known before Raccoon.
“Drop your weapon,” Irons commanded, and the girl did so, hesitating for only a second. The Browning clattered to the floor, and Irons had to resist the urge to laugh again, scarcely able to credit how stupidly she’d acted. The Umbrella assassin had obviously grown arrogant, walking into his Sanctuary as if she owned the place—and her smug, inflated conceit had cost her the game.
“Turn around, slow—and keep your hands where I can see them,” he said, still grinning. Oh, what a gloriously easy conquest! Umbrella had underesti-mated him for the last time.
Again, the girl did as he asked, pivoting slowly, her hands empty and open. The look on her face was priceless, her aquiline features fixed in a mask of fear and shock; she hadn’t expected this, she thought it would be a simple task to take out Brian Irons. After all, he was a broken man, a shadow of his former self, his city, his life taken away—
“Mistaken, weren’t you?” he said, feeling the hu-mor leak out of the situation, feeling the anger stir again. He kept the VP70 trained on her ridiculously young face; insulting, that they’d sent a child in to do their dirty work. Even such a pretty one. . . . “Calm down, Chief Irons,” she said, and even angry, he was pleased to hear the strain in her sultry voice, the edge of fear beneath her useless plea. He was going to enjoy this, even more than he’d imag-ined . . .
. . . but first, some answers.
“Who sent you? Was it Coleman, from headquar-ters? Or did your orders come from higher up ... someone on the board, perhaps? There’s no point in lying, not anymore.”
The girl stared at him, her eyes wide with feigned confusion. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking
about. Please, there’s been some kind of a mistake—“ “Oh, there’s been a mistake, all right,” Irons spat, “and you made it. How long has Umbrella been watching me? What were your orders, exactly—were you supposed to kill me outright, or did Umbrella want to see me suffer a little more first?” The girl didn’t answer for a moment, obviously trying to decide how much to tell him. She was good, her expression still carefully arranged to show only a bewildered fear, but he saw right through it. She’s been caught, she must know that I won’t let her live and she’s going to try and conceal the truth, even now. Young, but well-trained.
“I came to Raccoon looking for my brother,” she said slowly, her wide gray eyes fixed on the gun. “He was with the S.T.A.R.S., and I just—“ “S.T.A.R.S.? Is that the best you can do?” Irons laughed bitterly, shaking his head. The Raccoon S.T.A.R.S. had fled well before things had fallen to shit—and last he’d heard, Umbrella had already “converted” the organization to their purposes, and was working to eliminate those who wouldn’t cross over. As a cover story, it didn’t play.
But there is something. . . .
He narrowed his eyes, studying her pale, anxious face. “And just who is your brother?”
“Chris Redfield, you know him—I’m Claire, his sister, and I don’t know anything about whatever Umbrella did, and I wasn’t sent here to kill you.” She spoke quickly, all but stumbling over herself to get her story out.
She did look like Redfield, through the eyes at least.. . although why she thought that connection would help her somehow was beyond him. Chris Redfield was a pompous, disrespectful upstart who had openly defied him many times; in fact—
“Redfield was working for Umbrella, wasn’t he?” Even saying it aloud, Irons could see that it was the truth—and his anger swelled up like a red tide, an acid heat that flushed through his veins and made him feel sick.
Even my employees, all along. Treasonous Umbrella puppets.
“The Spencer estate, the accusations against Um-brella ... it was all a setup, they had him stirring up trouble to—to distract me so they could steal Birkin’s new virus. . . .”
Irons took a step toward the girl, barely able to keep himself from pulling the trigger in spite of his plans. The girl, Claire, took a step back, holding up her hands, palms out, as if to ward off his righteous fury.
“That’s how the S.T.A.R.S. knew to get out of town,” he snarled, “they were warned to get out of town before the T-Virus leak!”
He took another step forward, but Claire had stopped, her eyes going even wider. “You mean Chris isn’t here?”
Her small, hopeful whisper only fed the red, burn-ing heat that pounded through him—and the feelings were so powerful that they transcended rage, focusing his intentions into something brutal and precise. It wasn’t enough that he’d been betrayed by Umbrella and the S.T.A.R.S., it wasn’t enough that he’d been manipulated, tormented, hunted—
No. No, I have to be lied to by this little girl, a spy and an assassin from a family of traitors, A lifetime devoted to service, a lifetime of hard-won experience and self-sacrifice, and this is my reward. “A slap in
the face,” he said, his voice as cold as this new savagery that filled him up, transforming him into the hunter. “Treating me like an idiot. You don’t even have enough respect to lie well.” He extended the nine-millimeter and walked to-ward her, each step measured and deliberate—and her fear was real this time, he could see it in the way she stumbled back, her lips trembling, her young chest heaving in a most delicious way. She was terrified, trying to look for a weapon and watch him and get away all at the same time, succeeding at none of them as he marched forward.
“/ have the power,” he said, “this is my Sanctuary, this is my domain. You are the intruder. You are the liar, you are the evil—and I’m going to skin you alive. I’m going to make you scream, you bitch, I’m going to make you wish you were never born. Whatever they paid you, it wasn’t enough.”
She backed against one of the shelves, tripping over the leg of the worktable, almost falling on top of the covered trap door in the corner. Irons followed, feeling that beautiful, exciting power course through him, feeling excited by her helplessness. “Please, you don’t want to do this, I’m not who you think I am!”
Her pathetic entreaties made him stop and laugh, wanting to add to her terror, wanting for her to know that his control was absolute. She was wedged be-tween a trophy shelf and the covered pit, and Irons stayed a safe distance away, enjoying the look in her glistening, overbright eyes—the panic of a trapped animal, a soft, warm, powerless animal of tender, pliable flesh. . . .
Irons licked his lips, his hungry gaze traveling over her limber, smooth, cowering form. Another trophy, another body to transform . . . and it was time to get down to business, to—
“Graaagh!”
What the—
The board that covered the subbasement entrance flew into the air, splitting with a tremendous crack, one jagged piece hitting Irons’s hip. He staggered, not understanding—he was in control and yet something had gone horribly, horribly wrong—
Something wrapped around his ankle, something
that squeezed so tight he heard the bone being
crushed, felt incredible, spiking pain travel up his
leg-
• and he locked gazes with the girl, her eyes bright with a new terror, and in that instant of contact, of clarity, he wanted to teil her so much, wanted to tell her that he was a good man, a man who’d never deserved any of what had happened to him—
• and the vise-like grip j erked, and Irons was falling, dropping the gun, pulled into the pit by the screaming and the pain and the beast that waited for him below.