Sneaky, you pricks, but not sneaky enough.

Carlos was frowning, his expression openly con-fused. "What the hell is all this, anyway? Who would hide the gear at all, and why in such a complicated way?"

Jill plucked the shining gear from its hiding place, remembering her own thoughts on that exact subject only six weeks before, standing in the dark halls of Spencer's mansion. Why, why such elaborate secrecy? The files Trent had given her just before the estate mis-sion had been full of clues to the mansion's puzzles, lucky for her; without those, she might never have got-ten out. Most of the bizarre little mechanisms had been much too intricate to be practical, time-wise or func-tionally. What was the point? After giving it a lot of thought, Jill had finally con-cluded that Umbrella's real board of directors, the ones no one knew about, were paranoid fanatics. They were self-involved children, playing secret agent games and betting with other people's lives, because they could. Because no one had ever explained to them that hiding toys and making treasure maps was something people outgrew.

Because no one has stopped them. Yet.

Suddenly eager to wrap it all up, to place the gear and ring the bell and just leave, Jill phrased it much more simply to Carlos. "They're wacko, that's why. One-hundred-percent grade-A jacked-up batshit. You ready to get out of here, or what?"

Carlos nodded somberly, and after a final look around the room, they headed back out the way they'd come.

CARLOS WATCHED JELL CLIMB THE LADDER once more, trying not to get his hopes up again. If this didn't work, he was going to be deeply – no, majesti-cally pissed.

Hell with it. If this doesn't work, we should just walk out, or see if we can get to that factory and steal our-selves a ride. She's right, these people are andar lurias, lost in space; the sooner we get out of their territory, the better.

He stared blankly out at the dark yard for a few mo-ments, so bone-weary that he wondered how he would do one more thing, take one more step; it seemed im-possible. All that kept him going was his desire to leave, to get away from this holocaust and try to re-cover. When the first massive peal of sound rang out, its deep and hollow tone rolling out from the top of the tower, Carlos realized he couldn't keep a lid on his hope. He tried, telling himself that there was going to be a glitch in the program, telling himself that Um-brella would send assassins, that the pilot would be a zombie; nothing worked. A helicopter was coming for them, he knew it, he believed it; he just hoped the res-cue team wouldn't have any trouble finding a place to land…… spotlights! There were four of them on the ledge and a crusty-looking control box near the door that led back inside; the light would guide the transport in faster. Carlos hurried toward it, glancing up to see if Jill had started down yet. She hadn't…… and when he looked ahead again, he saw that he wasn't alone. As if by magic, the giant, mutilated freak that had been chasing Jill was simply there, close enough for Carlos to smell a burnt meat smell, snarling, its piggy, distorted gaze turned to the top of the ladder. "Carlos, look out!" Jill screamed down, but the Nemesis-monster ignored him completely, taking a mammoth step toward the ladder, the eyeless snakes that were its tentacles whipping around its colossal head. One more step and it would be at the base of the ladder and Jill would be trapped.

– she said bullets don't hurt it

Desperate to do something, Carlos saw the large green power switch on the spotlights' control panel and lunged for it, not sure what he expected. To distract it, if they were lucky…… and all four lights snapped on at once, blinding, instantly heating the air around them and illuminating the tower, probably for miles to see. One of the beams was full-on blocked by the freak's hideous face. The light actually forced the thing to stumble backwards, giant hands covering its mutant eyes, and Carlos acted. He ran at the blinded Nemesis, M16 held high, and slammed the rifle against its chest, pushing as hard as he could. Off balance, it stumbled backwards, its legs slapping the ancient railing…… and with a brittle snap, a wide section of the rail-ing gave way, falling into the darkness, the Nemesis plummeting after it. Carlos heard a sickly thump from the ground below at the same instant that the over-heated spotlights shut down, making glowing dark shapes float in Carlos's eyes for a moment. The huge, mellow sound of the bells continued to fill the air as Jill scrambled down the ladder and un-slung the grenade launcher, joining Carlos at the bro-ken railing. "I… thanks," Jill said, looking into his eyes, her own gaze sincere and unwavering. "If you hadn't hit the lights, I would have been dead. Thank you."

Carlos was impressed and a little flustered by her candor. "De nada," he said, suddenly very aware of how attractive she was – not just physically – and how little experience he actually had with women. He was a self-educated twenty-one-year-old mere, and he hadn't exactly had a whole lot of time or opportunity to date.

She can't be much older, twenty-five at the outside, and maybe she…

Jill snapped her fingers in front of him, bringing him back to reality and reminding him of how tired he re-ally was. He'd totally spaced out.

"You still with me?"Carlos nodded, clearing his throat. "Yeah, sorry. Didyou say something?"I said we need to move. If it's still that feisty after a

grenade in the face, I doubt a two-story drop will kill it."Right," Carlos said. "We should circle around front,anyway. They'll probably drop a harness if they can'tset down."Jill nodded. "Let's do it."Ushered inside by the deep voice of hollowed metal,Carlos suddenly wondered if Nicholai was still alive -

– and if he was, what he would do when he heard the tolling bells. Nicholai heard the bells on his walk back into town and scoffed irritably, refusing to be baited. He hadn't expected the barely skilled trio to make it, but so what if they had? Davis Chan had filed another report, from a woman's boutique of all places, and Nicholai meant to track him down.

And why should I care if they limp away with their miserable lives, with what I've got?

Nicholai pulled the slender metal case out of his pocket for the third time since leaving the hospital, un-able to resist. Inside was a glass vial of purplish fluid that he'd synthesized himself, with a little help from an instruction sheet that Aquino's assistant had thought-fully left behind. Nicholai knew it would be safest to store the sample someplace, but the small container represented his au-thority over the other Watchdogs and a newly elevated status with Umbrella; he was a leader, a supervisor of lesser men, and he found that carrying the vaccine with him and occasionally holding it made him feel power-ful. Grounded, in a way. Smiling, Nicholai slipped the container back into his pocket, within easy reach, and started walking again, deliberately ignoring the bells. Things were going very well – he had the vaccine; he knew where Chan was and where Franklin was going to be in just under forty-eight hours; he'd already rigged the hospital to blow; and he would push the button as soon as his meeting with Franklin was over. Nicholai thought he might duck over to the factory and get rid of Terence Foster while he waited on Franklin, there was plenty of time -

– just like there was plenty of time to track Mikhail, to play at being a noble team member, to decide who would die first among them…

The clamorous bells pounded at him, seeking to re-mind him of his failure, but he refused to be distracted by the escape of three incompetents. He was getting closer to town, he could see the combined glow of hun-dreds of small and not so small fires encasing the dark city; even if he wanted to, he wouldn't make it back to the clock tower before the first helicopter came. And he didn't want to, he'd had the opportunity after killing Aquino and had decided that it wasn't worth his time. It was the right decision… and the strange doubts that curled up inside of him at the sound of the bells were to be disregarded; it meant nothing, that they had sur-vived, it didn't mean that they were as good as him. Besides, he still had a few dogs to put down to en-sure his monopoly on information. He thought that Chan might choose to bunk down at the store he'd re-ported from, as late as it was. Nicholai would kill him, take his data, and retire for the evening somewhere in the city. At the Watchdog briefing he'd heard that food was scarce, but he was certain that he could manage raid a few pantries for canned goods, perhaps. In the morning he would file his own report, to keep up his cover, and spend the day hunting up information of his own before heading west again. Everything was fine, and as he gradually crossed over from the suburbs into the city, the sound of the ap-proaching helicopter didn't bother him a bit. Let those spineless, shit-eating bastards run, he felt great, in con-trol, better than great. He only had a headache because of those damned bells.