The footsteps hit like artillery rounds. Each one sent a shudder through the tunnel, shaking loose chips of concrete from the arched ceiling. Nemesis filled the entrance completely, its massive frame blocking the passage, and those red eyes cut through the dark and found Ryan and Jill without searching. The growl that rolled out of its chest said everything.
On the platform, no one made a sound. An old man had pulled a child against his chest. A wounded civilian was pressed into the corner with his knees drawn up, barely breathing. Mikhail held his position at the front, rifle up, teeth locked against the pain from his wound. The other U.B.C.S. men had their weapons raised too, but nobody in that station believed it would be enough.
Ryan's expression didn't change. The irritation was there, cold and familiar. This thing had followed them from the apartments to the power substation and now it had shown up here, ready to drag civilians into the middle of it. The platform was too small. The moment it charged, there was nowhere to go.
"We can't do this here," he said, quiet and flat. "Take it to the surface."
Jill nodded once, adjusting her grip.
He raised the shotgun and put a round directly into Nemesis's face. The blast knocked its head sideways. The roar that came back shook the walls.
"Run."
They broke for the exit. Nemesis tore the iron gate off its frame and came after them, its footfalls cracking the pavement, each step sending a tremor through the street.
They kept moving, trading ground for time. Ryan turned and fired as he retreated, round after round slamming into that huge body. The pellets left pale marks on its skin and nothing else. The hide had gone rigid, dense as armor plate, and the shotgun wasn't even slowing it down. Jill opened up too, a clean chest shot, and Nemesis didn't flinch. Its pace actually quickened.
"It's immune!" Jill called out. "The shotgun's doing nothing!"
Ryan already knew. He stopped expecting the guns to work and focused on angles, on keeping Nemesis moving in the direction they needed it to go. Everything depended on the pit.
The chase stretched on. Nemesis punched through walls and flipped cars without breaking stride, and the two of them worked around it, a few shots and then falling back, drawing it toward Gun Shop Kendo one block at a time. The street filled with smoke and spent brass. Zombies caught in the crossfire went down and were ignored. Nothing was stopping that thing.
They kept their heads. Ryan read the route, Jill covered his flanks, and Nemesis followed exactly where they wanted it.
Then Gun Shop Kendo came into view. And there in the middle of the street, the pit. Wide and dark and deep enough that you couldn't see the bottom.
"Here."
Both of them turned at the same time.
Nemesis charged, claws cutting the air with a sound like a whip crack. Ryan sidestepped and hit it full in the chest with the shotgun. Nothing. Jill came in from the angle and her shots landed just as clean and did just as little. Whatever that transformation had done to it, its body had become something that conventional weapons couldn't touch.
Ryan dropped the shotgun. His hand went to his hip and came up with the Desert Eagle.
He didn't rush. He let out a slow breath, found the spot on Nemesis's forehead, and locked onto it. Everything else went quiet.
Seven rounds. Seven armor-piercing shots into the exact same point, no deviation, each one stacking damage into the same crater, pushing through layer after layer until the surface gave.
Nemesis stopped moving.
Then it screamed.
The sound split the night open. A dark red mist erupted from its body as the flesh underneath began to writhe and swell. The human shape dissolved. Claws tore free from its own skin. Its skull cracked apart and fangs pushed through. The whole mass of it stretched upward, its body rewriting itself into something larger and worse, every surface knotted with swollen muscle and black veins.
Nemesis second form.
The thing filled the whole street. Blood mist drifted. The stench was immediate. It tilted its head back and let out a sound that shattered every window on the block, then dug its claws into the pavement and left furrows six inches deep.
Ryan looked at it for a moment.
"Ugly thing," he said.
Jill had gone pale, backing up without realizing it. She'd seen a lot in the last two days. Nothing like this. "What did Umbrella even make..."
The door of the gun shop banged open.
Robert Kendo came out at a run, glanced back once to confirm his daughter was still inside, then looked at Nemesis and his expression went flat and hard. He swung the grenade launcher off his back, aimed at its chest, and pulled the trigger.
The blast punched Nemesis back two full steps, half its body rocking out over the edge of the pit.
"Catch!" Kendo grabbed two more launchers from inside and hurled them out. One to Ryan, one to Jill. "That's the only thing that'll hurt it!"
Ryan caught his one-handed. Jill snatched hers out of the air.
Three barrels came up in the same second.
The grenades went out in rapid succession, detonating against Nemesis in a cascade of fire and shockwave. The pit's edge gave way, tons of earth and broken stone crumbling inward. More came down behind it, an avalanche of rock burying everything at the bottom.
Nemesis screamed once more as it went under. The enormous body fought against the collapse for a few seconds, clawing at nothing, and then the rubble swallowed it completely. The pit sealed over. Fire guttered in the cracks and went out.
The smoke thinned. Silence settled back onto the street.
Ryan lowered the grenade launcher. The barrel was hot against his palm.
Jill was still breathing hard, something unresolved in her eyes.
Kendo leaned against the door frame. His shoulders dropped, all the tension bleeding out at once, and he exhaled a long, slow breath into the dark.
For now, the hunt was over.