But not until I get to the girl. I captured her, I brought her here. My fault, and if I die, she dies, too.

In spite of all the horror he'd witnessed that day, the comrades he'd lost and the constant, gnawing terror of suffering a truly ghastly death, he couldn't stop thinking about her. Claire Redfield had blood on her hands, true, but not on purpose, not like Umbrella. Not like him. She hadn't killed for greed, she hadn't made him disregard his own conscience for all those years … and having watched his elite team turned into spaghetti by honest to God monsters, having spent the afternoon fighting for his life, it had become clear that trying to bring Umbrella to justice was what good guys did. The girl deserved something for that, even if only not to die alone and in the dark. And it just so happened that he had a set of keys taken from the dead warden's belt loop, one of which would surely fit her cell door. Sparks flurried up into the darkening sky from the flaming wreckage, tiny bright insects bursting into nothing, occasionally falling on one of the closer zombies and sizzling into their gray flesh before dying out. They didn't care. Rodrigo gritted his teeth and stumbled to his feet, aware that the young Claire probably wouldn't last ten minutes on her own, knowing that he meant to give her the chance. It wasn't the least he could do; it was simply the only thing left.

ONE

Claire's head hurt. She'd been half-dreaming, remembering things, until the faraway sound of thunder crowded through the dark, pulling her closer to wakefulness. She'd dreamed about the insanity that had become her life over the past few months, and even though an almost conscious part of her knew it was reality, it still seemed too incredible to be true.