The cell block was quieter than the garage had been, which wasn't the same as safe.
Leon moved through it the way he'd been moving through everything since the shutter — checking side rooms without lingering, taking what was useful, leaving what wasn't. A box of shotgun shells from an overturned supply cart near the guard station. Two handgun magazines from a holster on the floor, still attached to the belt of someone who didn't need them anymore. A first aid spray from the wall-mounted kit beside the monitoring station, the glass already broken, the kit already half-raided by someone.
He kept moving.
She stayed close — not pressed against him, not clinging, but within arm's reach, tracking the same corners he tracked with the same unhurried attention. He'd stopped consciously accounting for her position. She was simply there, the way peripheral vision was simply there, present and reliable and something he'd started depending on without deciding to.
He didn't know what to do with that yet.
A metallic sound reached them from somewhere deeper in the cell block — not an impact, not movement, just a shift, the specific resonance of something adjusting its weight against a metal surface in the dark. Leon stopped. The girl stopped with him, a half-second before he put his hand out.
Her head was already turned toward it. Shoulders fractionally tighter.
She'd had it before he did.
He scanned the corridor. Nothing. He kept moving, slower now, the shotgun no longer low.
The junction ahead was wider, ceiling higher, the lighting fractionally better. Ada was at the far wall beside a dead access panel, studying it with the focused attention of someone who had already decided what the panel was going to tell her and was confirming it.
Leon raised his gun.
The girl moved behind him. Automatic.
Ada looked at both of them and went back to the panel.
"It's not going to work," she said. "Secondary access is rerouted to the control room. You need the breaker first."
Leon kept the gun up. "You left."
"I came back."
"Why."
She turned from the panel. "Because you're still here and the route you need goes through a section I know and you don't."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting right now."
Leon looked at her for a moment. Then at the panel. Then back.
"The recording," he said. "Annette Birkin. The G-virus. You knew all of that before the garage."
"Yes."
"So tell me what it means."
Ada considered him. Something in the consideration had changed — less assessment, more decision.
"William Birkin built the G-virus under Umbrella's direction," she said. "Years of work. The T-virus was already in circulation — you've seen what that does. The G-virus was something else. Faster. Self-directed. Birkin thought he could control it." A pause. "He couldn't."
"The outbreak—"
"Started with the T-virus. Umbrella's containment failed and they chose to cut their losses." No heat in it. Just fact. "But Birkin was underground with something they wanted. When they sent a team to take it, he injected himself rather than hand it over."
Leon thought about the lower level. The arm. The eye. The thing that had been pressing itself against the ceiling and becoming something worse.
"And Annette."
"Still in the building. Or she was." Ada looked at the dead panel. "If she's alive, she knows more about what's below than anyone you'll find."
"Below meaning what."
"NEST." A beat. "Umbrella's primary research facility. Built under the city before the station was here. Separate power grid, separate access, separate everything — designed to not exist on paper." She paused. "That's where Birkin was working. That's where the G-virus was developed. And that's where whatever's left of it still is."
Leon looked at her.
"And you know this because."
Ada didn't answer that.
"Because FBI," he said.
"Because I do my research," she said. "Same result."
Leon let that settle.
"So Umbrella built it, lost control of it, and let the city burn."
"That's simplified."
"Is it wrong?"
A pause. "No."
He lowered the gun. Not holstered. "Then if there's a way to stop this or prove what they did — I'm going."
Ada studied him. The sunglasses made her unreadable in the way that forced you to track everything else.
"You're going to get yourself killed," she said.
"Probably."
Something moved at the edge of her expression and was gone.
"That's a hospital gown," Ada said.
Not a question. Not to Leon — just placed into the room.
Leon followed her gaze.
Really looked for the first time — the gown oversized, hem dragging at the ankle. Bare feet, soles dark with the grime of every surface since the sewer. And along the inner arm, visible now in the junction's better light — old punctures. Not random. Not recent. Spaced with the specific regularity of something done on a schedule.
He looked at her.
Not long. Just enough.
"Hey," he said, quieter. "Those — did that happen here?"
She didn't answer. Just watched him with that same still attention, like she was deciding what to do with the question.
He eased off a fraction. "You don't have to explain it." A beat. "Just — I want to help you."
Her gaze shifted slightly. Not away — just not fully on him anymore.
"Underground," she said. "Before."
He nodded once. "Okay."
A beat.
"How long."
She didn't answer that one.
He didn't push it.
Ada watched the exchange without commenting on it.
"Control room," she said, and turned toward the east corridor.
The route went through two junctions and a maintenance corridor stripped of half its infrastructure — pipes gone, conduit housing cracked, concrete showing underneath like something gutted and left that way.
Halfway through, the passage ended.
Not collapsed. Blocked. A heavy maintenance door, sealed, the panel beside it dark. Leon checked it twice.
Ada was already looking at the wall to the left.
A ventilation housing, low to the ground. Cover missing. The shaft beyond was dark and narrow.
"She can fit," Ada said.
"No."
"Twenty feet. Panel on the other side releases the door."
"No."
The girl was already crouching beside the opening. Looking into it.
"Hey—" Leon started.
She looked up at him.
He looked at the shaft. At the door. At her.
He didn't finish the sentence.
She went in.
He crouched at the opening and kept the flashlight angled into the shaft as far as it reached, which wasn't far enough. The sound of her moving through it was steady. Then quieter. Then he couldn't place it.
Ada was behind him, watching the corridor in both directions.
The silence from inside the shaft was different from the silence of movement stopping. Leon knew the difference. He stayed at the opening and kept the light up and listened.
Then she stopped.
Not the stop of someone reaching a destination. Something else — a body going still on purpose because it has registered something.
"Hey," Leon said. Low. "Talk to me."
A beat. Then, barely audible:
"Wait."
He was on his feet before he finished processing it, the shotgun up—
The door released.
She was on the other side, hand still on the panel, eyes already moving past him.
Something was wrong with the ceiling.
Leon registered it before he named it — weight distribution off, a surface doing something it shouldn't — and then he understood it.
The Licker dropped.
He moved — three steps, the shotgun coming up and the blast catching the thing across the shoulder as it descended, driving it sideways into the doorframe. It hit the floor and came up fast. Jaw spreading. Tongue extending.
She was already clear, pressed against the far wall. Leon fired again and it recoiled and he pumped and the shell ejector stuck for half a second — the specific failure of equipment that had been through too much — and the Licker was already correcting—
A reload click.
Ada's shot was clean and precise. The Licker's head snapped sideways and it dropped.
Ada looked at him.
"One," she said.
Leon looked at the body. Then at her.
"I didn't know we were keeping score."
She didn't answer. She was already turning toward the room.
The second Licker was on the ceiling.
It had been there the whole time, above the control panels. Leon had come through the door looking at the floor and hadn't looked up. He knew it was the mistake as the thing dropped.
The girl moved — not panic, one step, taking herself out of the trajectory. The Licker tracked the movement and the shift put Ada directly in the line.
Leon shoved Ada sideways.
Not a plan. His shoulder hit hers and they both went into the panel housing as the Licker came down where she'd been, claws raking the surface where her jacket had been half a second before.
Leon got the shotgun up from the floor and fired into the underside of its jaw as it tried to reorient. It dropped. He fired again. It stopped.
Leon stayed on the floor. Breathing loud. Shotgun still up at an angle that had stopped being useful.
Ada straightened from the panel housing. Looked at him. Looked at the two bodies.
"Now we're even," Leon said.
Something shifted in her expression. The controlled version of amusement — registered, contained, gone.
She turned to the breaker panel. "Main switch. Third lever left side, secondary. Both."
Leon got to his feet. Found the switches. Threw them.
Final section replacement — everything from "The lights came on in sections" to end of chapter:
The lights came on in sections — power moving through the station in a wave that was audible as much as visible. Somewhere in the cell block, locks disengaged in sequence.
Leon looked at the monitoring station.
One of the feeds had shifted.
The corridor outside Ben's cell. Something moved in it — slow, unsteady, pushing itself up. Then another. Then a third, further back.
Leon stepped closer.
"They're moving."
Ada took it in once.
"If you go now, you walk straight into that."
"He's not staying in there."
Her gaze moved across the other feeds — more corridors lighting up, more movement spreading.
"Then you don't have time to do both."
Leon's eyes stayed on the screen. On Ben's cell. On the green indicator above the door.
"Garage is still locked," he said. "We don't get out without his card."
Ada looked at him differently. Not disagreement — recalculation.
"You're sure he still has it."
"He didn't give it up before."
A beat. Her gaze moved across the feeds again — routes, movement, timing.
"Then I clear the way," she said. "You get him out."
Leon nodded once. "You know the lower access."
"Yes."
"Then go." A beat. "I'll meet you at the garage."
Ada studied him — quick, precise.
"If you're not there, I'm not coming back."
"I'll be there."
He turned.
The girl moved with him. No hesitation.
Ada watched that for a second.
Then she stepped back, already angling toward the far corridor — not rushing, not hesitating, just choosing her path and committing to it.
Leon didn't watch her go.
The cell block corridor was louder now — locks clicking, systems cycling.
A sharp metallic rattle echoed ahead.
Then again.
The girl slowed.
Head tilting.
Leon noticed her before the sound.
Then he heard it.
Low. Wet. Fast.
He raised the shotgun.
The kennels were at the end of the hall. Heavy units. Three open.
Empty.
The first dog came around the corner at full speed.
Leon fired. The blast caught its shoulder and threw it sideways — but it kept moving, claws scrambling for grip.
He pumped and fired again.
It dropped.
The second came from the right.
He turned too late. The shot went wide. It was already inside his reach.
He drove the barrel into it instead, knocked it off line, fired down as it hit the floor.
The third didn't come at him.
It went past him.
Leon saw it a half-second before it committed — grabbed the girl and pulled her back as claws tore the wall where she'd been.
He fired at point-blank range.
The body collapsed.
Silence hit hard.
Leon stood there, breathing, shotgun empty.
He looked at the girl.
She was watching the open cages. Not the bodies. The cages.
"You good."
She looked at him.
That was enough.
He reloaded and kept moving.
The cell block was active now — not overrun, not yet, but shifting. Doors open that shouldn't be. Movement where there hadn't been any before.
"Stay close," he said.
She already was.
Ben's corridor was three turns ahead.
On the second, Leon slowed.
Listened.
Something moved behind one of the open cells. A shift. Not a full body.
He didn't check it.
Kept moving.
Behind them, in the control room, the monitors kept cycling.
One feed held a second longer than the rest.
Lower level. Concrete. Pipes.
Something moved through it.
Not fast.
Not searching.
Just moving.