September 29
POV Carlos Oliveira
Bard moved fast when he finally moved — grabbed two cases from the cabinet, left a third without explanation, and was at the door before Carlos had his rifle up. He'd already decided it wasn't worth the time.
Tyrell pushed off the wall. The effort showed.
Carlos looked at him once and didn't say anything about it.
"Formation," he said. "I'm front. Bard, you stay between us. Tyrell—"
"I know," Tyrell said.
Above them, something shifted in the ceiling.
Not the building. Weight shifting above them — slow and deliberate, moving toward the east end of the corridor.
Carlos opened the door and went.
The corridor was darker than the comms room, emergency strips doing less than they should, long stretches of nothing between pools of failing light. Carlos moved through the dark sections without slowing because slowing meant stopping and stopping meant whatever was above them had time to choose.
He kept the rifle up. Kept the pace tight enough that Bard was never more than two steps behind him.
The ceiling tracked them.
No sound — he felt it. The faint vibration of weight crossing the surface above, keeping pace without committing. He filed it and kept moving.
The Umbrella bodies were in the junction before the east stairwell.
Four of them. He almost missed the first — slumped against the wall in a position that read as infected until he got close enough to see the uniform, the clean entry wound above the ear, placed, not fallen.
He stopped.
Bard came up behind him and looked and said nothing for a moment.
"They weren't clearing," he said. Low. Not explaining — stating, the way you state something you've already finished processing. "They were removing."
Carlos crouched beside the nearest body. Umbrella operative — full kit, mostly expended. He checked the vest pockets without sentiment. Two magazines, standard caliber. A grenade, pin intact. He took everything and stood.
"Keep moving," he said.
The infected came out of the east maintenance bay — two of them, a third behind the door that hadn't fully opened yet. Tight space, low ceiling, no room to work.
Carlos put the first one down with two rounds to the chest and one to the head when it didn't stop. The second came faster and he stepped into it rather than back, drove the butt of the rifle into its face hard enough to stagger it, and fired once more at close range.
The third pushed through the door.
He was already reloading — the magazine change smooth until it wasn't, the fresh mag catching on the receiver for half a second that cost him a step backward into Bard. He got it seated and fired twice. The third one dropped.
He stood there for a moment, breathing.
"Move," Bard said, behind him. Flat. Not impatient — just aware that stopping had a cost.
He moved.
The ceiling gave way without warning.
A crack of plaster and then the Hunter was already down, landing between Carlos and Bard with a force that buckled the tile and sent debris skittering down both ends of the corridor. Carlos fired immediately, two rounds, and both hit and neither stopped it. It turned toward the shots.
"Back," Carlos said.
Bard was already moving. Tyrell too, slower, one hand on the wall.
The Hunter came for Carlos.
He put three more rounds into it and it slowed — not stopped, slowed, shoulder folding, foreleg dragging — and lunged anyway. He threw himself sideways and it caught the wall where his head had been, claws gouging concrete, and turned.
Carlos pulled the grenade from his vest.
Close range. Too close. He knew that before he did it.
He threw it low, under the Hunter's chest, and turned his shoulder into the wall.
The blast filled the corridor and drove the Hunter into the far wall in a burst of heat and concussion that put Carlos on one knee, ears gone, vision briefly white. He came up already moving.
The Hunter was against the wall. Moving. Not fast — the chest cavity had opened and one foreleg wasn't responding — but moving, pulling itself sideways, orienting.
"Go," Carlos said.
They went.
The three of them moved faster now, stealth gone, noise already spent. Carlos tracked the ceiling while Bard navigated — the only one who knew the exact route, which was the part Carlos hated and couldn't do anything about. Tyrell's footsteps had changed behind him. Shorter. Heavier on the left.
"Bard," Carlos said.
"Next junction, left."
Something moved above them — different from before. Not the Hunter they'd left. Another one, tracking the noise they were making, following the same line the first had before it came through.
Tyrell's hand found the back of Carlos's vest.
"Still here," Tyrell said.
Carlos didn't slow.
Left at the junction, through a fire door that Bard had to key with a card he'd kept in his breast pocket, and then they were through and the door sealed behind them and the corridor on the other side was quiet in a way that felt provisional rather than safe.
Bard's office was small and intact — the specific untouched quality of a room people knew better than to enter. Equipment along one wall, a locked cabinet that Bard went to immediately, a desk that had been cleared and reorganized more than once. No windows. One door, which Carlos locked and braced with a chair from the corner.
He checked the ceiling.
Solid. No tile displacement. Nothing tracking overhead.
He gave it ten seconds.
Then he turned to Tyrell.
"Sit down," he said.
Tyrell sat down.
Bard had the cabinet open before Carlos crossed the room, pulling what he needed without looking for it. He worked on Tyrell first — fast, rough, functional. The wound wasn't clean but it wasn't the one that would finish him if they kept moving. He wrapped it tight and moved to Jill without pausing.
"This won't fix it," he said.
He didn't look up.
"Just buys time."
Carlos watched him work and said nothing.
A moment passed.
After a moment: "What's at NEST."
Bard didn't stop moving. "Where this started."
A pause.
"Lab. Live testing." He set down one vial and picked up another. "What I moved up here isn't enough. It slows the progression. If there's anything left, it's down there."
"And the vaccine," Tyrell said from the wall.
"Not finished." Bard sealed the case. "Close. The clean team knew that."
Jill. The wound. The slight rise and fall of her breathing — still there, still wrong, still continuing.
"How long," Carlos said.
Bard snapped the case shut. Looked at Carlos for the first time since the corridor — the flat, measuring attention that had nothing warm in it.
"Long enough. If we move."
Carlos looked at Tyrell. At the wrap around his side, already darkening at the edge. At the sealed door between them and the corridor.
Something shifted above them.
Not close — two floors up, maybe three — but moving, the sound of weight crossing tile in a direction that had them as its bearing.
Then, a few seconds later, something else. Different.
Closer this time.
Carlos looked at the door.
Checked his magazine.
Not full.
"NEST — in and out," he said. "We don't stop."
Nobody argued.
He'd just set his hand on the handle when Bard said: "Wait."
Carlos turned.
Bard was at the cot. Two fingers on Jill's wrist, eyes on nothing in particular, counting something Carlos couldn't hear.
A long moment.
"Her pulse," Bard said.
Carlos crossed the room in four steps.
The grey was still there — the colour her skin had gone two hours ago. But something in her face had released. Not healed. Not fine. The locked tension around her jaw and brow — that was gone. Like a current that had been running through her had dropped.
Her chest moved. Steadier than before.
"Is that—" Tyrell started.
"It's slowing it." Bard set down her wrist. "Not enough."
Carlos crouched beside the cot.
He looked at her face. At the line of her jaw. At the breathing that was wrong and getting less wrong by degrees.
Then her eyes opened.
Not fast — a slow return, coming from very far away. She stared at the ceiling for a moment without recognition. Her hand moved first, fingers finding the edge of the cot, pressing down, locating herself before anything else.
Her eyes found Carlos.
She didn't say anything. Her throat worked once.
"Easy," he said.
She blinked. The focus came in slow, like something assembling. Her gaze moved to the room — the ceiling, the door, the cases on the desk — reading the space before she tried to speak.
"How long." Her voice scraped down to almost nothing.
"Long enough," he said.
She looked at the ceiling again. Her jaw tightened once.
"Something's up there," she said.
"Two floors," Carlos said. "Moving."
She tried to sit up. Made it halfway before her arm gave and Carlos caught her shoulder and held her where she was, and she didn't fight it, which told him more about her condition than anything Bard had said.
"I can move," she said.
"Not yet."
"Carlos—"
"One minute." He looked at her until she stopped. "Give it one minute."
Above them, the weight shifted again. Still moving. Still getting its bearing.
Jill's hand closed around the edge of the cot and held there, knuckles pale, and she stared at the ceiling with the specific attention of someone marking a target they couldn't reach yet.
Her breathing steadied.
Not recovered. Not safe.
But present.