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 sus-pected 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'dstowed the heavy revolver and the rest of the rifle'smagazines on the helicopter."Grenade gun?" he shouted back, and it was Jill'sturn 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 frontand back doors were heavy-duty, they'd have betterluck blowing a hole in the wall… and the answer hit him, and he saw that Jill al-ready had it from the way she was staring at him, eyeswide and blinking.The Nemesis-monster's howl was winding down, buta horrible, wet slurping noise had begun, the sound ofsomething vast and sticky moving slowly and steadilyacross concrete.
      It's coming for her."Can you operate it?" Carlos asked, already steelinghimself for a confrontation with whatever the Nemesishad become."Maybe, but…"Carlos cut her off. "I'm going to distract it -get thatthing running and let me know when to duck."
      Before Jill could protest, Carlos hurried past her, de-termined to do whatever he could to keep it from get-
      ting 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 it-self along with clawed, shapeless appendages the color of blisters. Fleshy lumps rose and fell like bub-bles 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 pas-sage. 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 in-sanely 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. How 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 but-tons 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. After a second frantic, desperate search she'd found the power switches on its base, and the machine had thrummed to beautiful, wonderful life. "Move!" Jill shouted, pushing the levers that slowly and precisely raised the cannon, its movements spelled out digitally on a small screen next to the base. She could feel the energy building, the air around her heat-ing up, and as Carlos got out of the way and the Neme-sis-entity slithered out into the open, she found herself positively thrilled, almost overcome with an intense and violent sense of self-satisfaction. It had killed Brad Vickers and tracked her merci-lessly through the city. It had murdered the rescue team and stranded them in Raccoon, it had infected her with disease, it had terrorized her and wounded Carlos – and that it had been programmed to do these things didn't matter; she hated it with everything inside of her, de-spised it more than anything she'd ever despised. The mutated, aberrant thing inched forward on a wave of slime as the cannon's hum reached an explo-sive crescendo, the sound drowning out everything. Jill's words went unheard, even by her.
      "You want S.T.A.R.S., I'll give you S.T.A.R.S., you piece of shit," she said, and slammed her hand down on the activation switch.

      A BRILLIANT LIGHT, WHITE BUT SHADED with electrically searing orange and blue, burst from the end of the laser cannon in a beam of concentrated fury. Arcs of heat and light stormed over the body of the cannon like miniature bolts of lightning, and the laser found the once-Nemesis's writhing, pulsating body and began to eat. The creature that had once been the pride of Um-brella's development section whined and thrashed, flailing its multiple limbs in a frenzy of agonized confusion. The tight beam of light bored into its flesh, as-relentless as it had proved, melting layers of tissue and soldering harder materials – bone and car-tilage and pliable metal – into fused and useless lumps. The creature began to smolder, then smoke, and as the brain stem inside of it withered and cooked, the Nemesis ceased to exist, its program wiped, its improbable heart finally bursting silently, deep in-side. A few seconds later, the cannon overheated and shut itself down.

      THE HELICOPTER LIFTED UP AND AWAY, A little jerky at first, but Carlos quickly found his bal-ance. The first streaks of real light were swelling into the eastern sky as the doomed city fell behind them. It seemed so strange to finally be on their way, after days of wanting it so badly, of working toward noth-ing else. "Nicholai's dead," Jill said, her voice cool and clear over the headset. It was the first thing she'd said since they'd taken off. "The Nemesis got him." "No great loss," Carlos replied and meant it. They fell into silence again, Carlos content to just fly for the moment, give himself a chance to be still. He was dog-tired and wanted only to get as far away from Raccoon as possible before the missiles hit. After a moment, Jill reached across and placed her hand over his, and that was okay, too. Jill held Carlos's hand as the sun inched slowly up over the horizon, turning the sky magnificent shades of pink and gray and lemon yellow. It was lovely, and Jill found that, as hard as she tried, she couldn't feel sorry that Raccoon was about to be dusted. It had been her home for a while, but it had become pain and death for thousands of people, and she thought that blasting it to hell and gone was probably the best thing that could happen to it. Neither of them spoke as the sun continued to rise, as the miles flew beneath them, forests and farms and empty roads appearing fresh and bright in the gently warming light. When the sky flashed white and the sound wave hit them a moment later, Jill didn't look back.

      TRENT HAD HIS HANDS FULL FOR MOST OF the day, listening in on the spindoc meetings, arrang-ing for media sympathy with a few of their bought networks, and explaining the difference between HARMs – the air to surface missiles that the army had used on Raccoon – and SRAMs to the three heads of White Umbrella. Jackson, in particular, was unhappy that the larger tactical missiles hadn't been used; he didn't seem to understand that a deliberate nuclear in-cident within the United States had to be kept as small and contained as possible. Ironic, that a man with so much wealth and power could be so oblivious to the reality he had helped create. Trent finally had a few moments to himself in the early evening, after a final review of the Watchdog re-ports. He took a cup of coffee out onto the balcony of the rooms he used when he was at the DC offices. The brisk twilight was refreshing after a day of recycled air and fluorescent lights.
      From twenty stories up, the city below seemed un-real, sounds distant and features blurred. Gazing out at nothing in particular, Trent sipped his coffee and thought about all he'd witnessed in the past few days from the shielded privacy of his home. Umbrella's few dozen stationary remotes in Raccoon had had nothing on the satellite pirate that piped information to his private screening room; he'd been able to follow several dramas that had unfolded in the last hours of the city. There had been the rookie policeman, Kennedy, and Chris Redfield's sister – the two of them had barely es-caped the lab explosion, managing to save Sherry Birkin, the young daughter of one of Umbrella's top re-search scientists, of all people. Trent hadn't had contact with any of them, but he knew that Leon Kennedy and Claire Redfield had become part of the fight. They were young, determined, and filled with a hatred for Umbrella; he couldn't have asked for better. Trent's high hopes for Carlos Oliveira had been well met, and that he had joined forces with Jill Valen-tine… Trent had been utterly transfixed by their es-cape, pleased that two of his unwitting soldiers had worked so well together, surviving in spite of Jill's in-fection, the lunatic Russian, and the S.T.A.R.S. seeker. Use of the experimental Tyrant-like units was still in question by many of the White Umbrella researchers; for as deadly efficient as they usually were, they were also very expensive, and Trent knew that the debates would go on, fueled by the loss of two units in the de-struction of the city.
      Ada Wong, though…
      Trent sighed, wishing that she had survived. The tall, beautiful, Asian-American agent he had sent in had been as brilliant as she was competent. He hadn't actu-ally seen her die, but the chances that she had escaped both the lab explosion and the complete obliteration of Raccoon were slim to none. Unfortunate, to say the least. Overall, though, Trent was satisfied with how things were progressing. As far as he could tell, no one in the company had the slightest inkling of who he really was or what he was doing. The three most powerful men in Umbrella relied on him more and more every day, com-pletely unaware of his agenda – to destroy the organi-zation, from without and within, to devastate its leaders' lives and deliver them to justice; to organize an elite army of men and women committed to Umbrella's downfall, and to guide them as much as he was able in their quest. If his methods were complicated, the reason was simple: to avenge the death of his parents, both scien-tists, murdered when he was a child so that Umbrella could profit from their research. Trent smiled to himself, taking another sip from his mug. It sounded so melodramatic, so grandiose. It had been almost thirty years since his parents had been burned alive in the alleged laboratory accident. He'd left the pain behind long ago – his resolve, however, had never faltered. He'd changed his name, his back-ground, given up any hope of ever having a normal Life and regretted nothing, even now that he shared responsibility for the deaths of so many. It was getting dark. Far below, streetlights were flickering on, sending up a soft glow that would radiate out into the night sky like a halo above the city. In its own way, it was quite beautiful. Trent finished his coffee and absently traced the Um-brella logo on the side of the cup with his fingers, thinking about darkness and light, good and evil, and the shades of gray that existed in between everything. He needed to be very careful, and not just to avoid being discovered; it was those shades of gray that wor-ried him. After a few moments, Trent turned his back on the gathering dark and went inside. He still had a lot to do before he could go home.