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.and if there was time, hecould dominate her in a more pleasurable fashion, afarewell that he could reflect back upon for years tocome.Nicholai quickly moved behind the door, his boot-steps echoing in the roomwide corridor, rifle ready.He'd earned this, and he was going to get exactly whathe deserved.Jill walked into some kind of operations room, hersenses on high alert as she looked across the openspace, decorated in classic Umbrella laboratory style -- blank, cold, cement walls, metal railings that separatedthe bi-level room in an absolutely functional way, noth-ing bright or colorful in sight.Unless blood counts.Dried splashes of it stained the floor all around the low worktable that dominatedthe room.Probably not Nicholai's work, unlike thecorpse she'd found in the office next to the room withthe broken steam pipes.A short man in his mid-30s,shot in the face, his body still warm.She had no doubtthat Nicholai was close, and she found herself almosthoping she'd run into him soon, just so she could standdown, not have to look over her shoulder with everystep.She didn't see anything resembling a key card or aradio in the room, so she decided to move on - shecould head through the side door in the nook to her leftor go down.Side door, she decided, on the off chancethat Nicholai had headed that way; so far, she'd beenthrough every room she could get into on the secondfloor and didn't want to go downstairs and risk lettinghim get behind her.She walked to the door, wondering again what hadbeen done with the bodies of those who had died in thefacility.She'd seen plenty of blood and fluid stains, butonly a handful of corpses.Maybe they were dumped downstairs., she thought,pulling the security door open and sweeping left to rightwith the Beretta.A corridor as big as a room, with asmall offshoot at the back wall that headed right.Totallyempty.She stepped inside.or Umbrella orderedeverything cleaned up so their employees didn't have tospend the crisis stepping over their dead coworkers."Freeze, bitch," Nicholai said from behind her, roughlyjamming the barrel of his rifle into her lower back."Butdrop your weapon first, if you wouldn't mind."A sarcastic rephrasing of what she'd said to him inthe park, and she couldn't miss the thread of almosthysterical glee in his voice.She'd been careless, andshe was going to die for it."Okay, okay," she said, letting the 9mm slip from herfingers and clatter to the floor.She still had the grenadegun on her back, but it was useless - in the time itwould take her to unstrap the thing, he could empty amag into her and have a chance to reload.'Turn around slowly and back away, hands claspedin front of you.Like you're praying."Jill did what he wanted, backing across the roomuntil her back touched the wall, more afraid than shewanted to admit when she saw the constantly twitchingsmile, and the way his eyes rolled from side to side.He's gone over.Whatever was wrong with him tostart, being in Raccoon sparked it into a full-blownpsychosis.The way he looked her up and down filledher with a different kind of fear.She knew of severaleffective ways to stop a rapist's attack, but that was assuming she was still able-bodied enough to fight, andshe doubted very much that Nicholai would approachher without firing a few well-placed shots first.She glanced to her left, down a narrow hall that deadended at a closed door.Won't make it, try to talk to him."I thought you just wanted to get out of the city," shesaid neutrally, not sure what tack to use.She'd alwaysheard that crazy people should be humored, but shecouldn't see that it was going to make much of a differ-ence; Nicholai meant to kill her, period.He casually walked toward her, smiling his trem-bling smile.Thunder rumbled overhead, a distantsound."I want to get out now, now that I have all theinformation.I killed all of the others for theirs, theWatchdogs.Umbrella is going to have to deal with me,and only me, and I'm going to be extremely wealthy.It's all balanced out, and now that you're here, my suc-cess is assured."In spite of herself, Jill was curious."Why me?"Nicholai moved closer but stayed a safe distanceaway."Because you took the antidote," he said in amatter-of-fact tone."Carlos stole it at your bidding,don't try to deny it.Tell me, are you working onyour own initiative, or were you sent to interferewith my plans? How much do Carlos and Mikhailknow?"Christ, what do I say to that? Again thunder mut-tered overhead, and Jill found herself distracted by it,too confused by Nicholai's bizarre reasoning to answerhim right away.Strange, that they could hear it throughthe heavily insulated ceiling.not as strange as thinking about the weather at atime like this.She had to say something, to at least tryand prolong her life; as long as she was breathing, therewas a chance."Why should I tell you anything? You're going to killme anyway," she said, as though there was somethingto tell.Nicholai's smile faltered, and then he brightenedagain, nodding."You're right, I am." He aimed the rifleat her left knee and licked his lips."But not before weget to know each other a little better, I think we haveenough time."Crash!Jill fell backwards, sure she'd been hit, but he didn'tfire, it was thunder -- and the ceiling was falling, part of it, chunks ofdrywall and concrete raining down as Nicholaiscreamed, firing wildly.and disappeared.Nicholai had her within his control, she was going to bleed and cry and he would be victorious, he had won.and then the ceiling gave way, debris crashingover him and something giant and cold and hardwrapped around the back of his neck.Nicholai fired,screaming, A witch, she's.and he was yanked up into the dark by the mas-sive, icy thing, a hand, Jill's shocked face the last thinghe saw before the fingers tightened, before a cold andliving rope coiled around his waist.The hand and ropepulled in opposite directions, and Nicholai felt hisbones crack, skin and muscle stretching as blood filledhis mouth, screaming -- this is wrong I control stop -- and he was torn in half, and he knew no more.Jill could only see part of what happened, but it wasenough.As a river of blood poured over the hole'sragged edge, splashing to the floor, she heard the rum-bling growl of the Nemesis and saw a tentacle snakedown through the steaming red gush, searching.She didn't dare run beneath it.She turned and randown the offshoot, scrabbling for the grenade gun, heronly weapon.bam, she hit the heavy door and was through, intoa dark and echoing abyss, a wave of stench hitting herlike a slap
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