Стефани Перри: Nemesis

She was so close! Carlos laughed,We're outta here, it's over! "The feds are gonna blow up the city in like half an hour, at dawn, but it's okay, we're ready to fly—do you see that ladder in the middle of the room? Over."

"Yeah, it's—they're going to blow up Raccoon, are you sure?" She sounded totally bewildered and forgot to use radio protocol.

"Jill, I'm positive. Listen to me—go down the ladder and start running, you'll end up where I am, there's nowhere else to go. Through a cement room to the exit sign, then outside, then through this huge warehouse— there's some kind of a power generator in there, you'll have to run around some equipment. The back door will be at about... eleven o'clock from the front, got it? I'll be on the other side. And you better bust ass to get here, no dicking around."

There was the slightest pause, and Carlos could hear the tight smile in her voice when she responded. "Dicking around youwish. On my way, over and out."

Grinning, Carlos powered up the 'copter as the deep, navy blue sky began to lighten, preparing for dawn.

TWENTY-SEVEN

JILL SLID DOWN THE LADDER AND STARTED running, her mind reeling with the news about Raccoon. She couldn't imagine what had been going on outside of the city in past days that the conclusion had been reached to blast a quarantine site out of existence.

Of course it has to be blown up, they would have wanted that once they'd collected their data, to make sure all the evidence is destroyed—

Jill leaped over a sprawled body, then another, and was at the doors with the exit sign overhead, just as Carlos had said. She barreled through and was greeted by wonderfully fresh, cool air, heavy with dew.

Dawn, he said they were launching at dawn.Half an hour was a generous estimate. Jill ran faster, through a winding corridor of stacked cars and junk metal, and there was the warehouse, straight ahead. It was big,

low, and wide, and she was already thinking in hours when she hit the heavy, steel-reinforced front doors.

Eleven o'clock...She couldn't see the back door for the giant wall of unidentifiable machinery in the way, all thick pipes and metal shielding, but Carlos had said she'd have to run around some equipment. She veered right—

—and stopped in her tracks, staring at the monstrous apparatus that Carlos had mistaken for a generator. It was some kind of a laser cannon, huge, cylindrical, she'd seen them before but not even half the size—it was at least ten feet high and twenty long, and as big around as a table for six. Dozens of cables led from various outlets to the wall of machinery she stood next to, and it was aimed approximately at the front door, making her wonder what the hell they'd tested it on...

The back door slammed open. Jill reflexively pointed the Beretta and saw Carlos standing there, the whining sound of a revving helicopter outside.

"Jill, come on!"

He was obviously glad to see her, but she could read the urgency in his face, a reminder of what was coming as the door closed behind him.

She jogged toward him in the sudden silence, shaking her head. "Sorry, I was surprised is all, that's a laser cannon, biggest I ever—"

Ka-rash!

Near the ceiling by the front door, a giant mass exploded out of the wall, disappearing from their sight as it fell to the floor behind the wall of machinery. Jill had just an impression of a swollen, bulbous body surrounded by claws and tentacles, and she knew that she'd been right about the Nemesis. It was evolving.

A beat later there was another crash. Sparks crackled and flew from a tall panel next to the entrance, and a gurgling, warped howl erupted into the room, the cry of the Nemesis, but horribly mutated, deeper, rougher—

"Come on!" Carlos shouted, and Jill ran to him as he jerked at the handle on the back door—

—and it didn't open, and Jill noticed the small blinking lights on the panel next to it and understood that the Nemesis had shorted out the locking mechanisms.

They were locked in the warehouse with the thing that had been the S.T.A.R.S. killer, and it was screaming for blood.

TWENTY-EIGHT

CARLOS HEARD THE THING HOWL AND KNEW what it was. He'd only caught a glimpse of the monster on its way down, but it was big and badass, and he suspected that they were screwed.

Jill raised her voice to a shout, and Carlos could only barely hear her over the Nemesis's seemingly endless scream.

"Where's the .357?"

Carlos shook his head. He had the M16, but he'd stowed the heavy revolver and the rest of the rifle's magazines on the helicopter.

"Grenade gun?" he shouted back, and it was Jill's turn to shake her head.

A 9mm and maybe twenty rounds left for the rifle.

We'll have to blow open the door, it's our only chance—

Carlos knew better even as he thought it. The front

and back doors were heavy-duty, they'd have better luck blowing a hole in the wall—

—and the answer hit him, and he saw that Jill already had it from the way she was staring at him, eyes wide and blinking.

The Nemesis-monster's howl was winding down, but a horrible, wet slurping noise had begun, the sound of something vast and sticky moving slowly and steadily across concrete.

It's coming for her.

"Can you operate it?" Carlos asked, already steeling himself for a confrontation with whatever the Nemesis had become.

"Maybe, but—"

Carlos cut her off. "I'm going to distract it—get that thing running and let me know when to duck."

Before Jill could protest, Carlos hurried past her, determined to do whatever he could to keep it from getting to her,at least it's slower than it was, if I can just

slow it down a little more —

He reached the end of the wall of equipment, took a deep breath, stepped around the corner—and cried out in involuntary disgust at the oozing, undulating mass that crept and crawled toward him, pulling itself along with clawed, shapeless appendages the color of blisters. Fleshy lumps rose and fell like bubbles in a pot of stew along its twisted back, thin, black fluid trickling from dozens of tiny slits on its body, wetting the floor, lubricating its meaty passage.

Carlos picked a slightly raised lump on top of the giant, pulsing creature and opened fire, the rounds

splashing into the fleshy surface like pebbles into a stream,tat tat tat —

—and lightning fast, one of the tentacles at the front of the body lashed out, slapping Carlos's legs hard enough to knock him down.

Carlos scrambled backwards through the pain in his side, awed by its incredible speed and not a little afraid. The bulk of it moved slowly, but its reflexes were insanely fast, and it had reached across three meters of open space to knock him down, seemingly without strain.

"Puta madre,"he breathed, the worst curse he could think of as he rolled to his feet and backed away. It was already to the corner of the metal wall, ten meters or less from the cannon where Jill was wildly slapping at switches. He'd distracted it about as effectively as a fly distracted an airplane.#ow much time do we have left before daybreak —

Suddenly, it howled again, a chorus of sound, each small, leaking slit on its body gaping open, a thousand mouths screaming, creating a trumpeting, deafening roar.

It wasn't going to stop. Carlos backed further away and opened fire again, a waste of bullets, but there was nothing else he could do—

—and then he heard the powerful, rising hum of a mighty turbine spinning fast and faster, and Jill was screaming for him to move, and Carlos moved.

She hadn't been able to find the power main, no buttons or cords to connect, and she didn't know enough about machines to figure it out. She'd seen Carlos fall

and her heart had stopped, but she'd forced herself to keep trying, knowing it was all they had.