JILL HAD FINALLY DECIDED TO OPEN THE metal shutter and make a break for it when she heard shots outside, the high-pitched chatter of an assault rifle. To say she was relieved was an understatement; the relentless thumping of the mostly dead outside had been eating at her nerves, almost tempting her to shoot herself, just so she wouldn't have to hear it anymore - and now, in a matter of seconds, it was quiet onceagain.She moved quickly to the side door in the garage,ducking beneath a disemboweled red compact on a liftand pressing her ear to the cold metal. All was silent,the virus carriers surely dead...Bam-bam-bam!Jill jerked back as someone hammered on the door,her heart keeping time.

"Hey, is somebody in there? The zombies are dead, you can open up now!"

No mistaking the accent; it was Carlos Oliveira. Re-lieved, Jill turned the lock, announcing herself as she threw the door open.

"Carlos, it's Jill Valentine."

She was happy to see him, but the look on his face was so sincerely elated that she felt almost shy sud-denly. She moved back from the door so he could step inside.

"I'm so glad you're okay, when you weren't at the trolley, I thought..." Carlos trailed off, his "thought" obvious enough. "Anyway, it's really good to see you again."

His apparently serious concern for her was a sur-prise, and she was uncertain how to respond  - irrita-tion, that she was being patronized? She didn't feel irritated. Having someone interested in her well-being, particularly considering the kind of chaos they were in, was  - well, kind of nice.

The fact that that someone is tall, dark, and hand-some isn't such a terrible thing, either, hmm? Jill in-stantly clamped down on the thought, cutting it short. True or not, they were in a survival situation; they could make eyes at each other later, if they made it out alive. Carlos didn't seem to notice her slight discomfort.

"So, what are you doing here?" Jill gave him a half smile. "I got sidetracked. Don't suppose you saw Frankenstein's monster wandering around out there?" Carlos frowned. "You saw him again?" "Not him, it. It's called a Tyrant, if it's what I think it is  - or some variation, anyway. Bio-synthetic, ex-tremely strong, and very hard to kill. And it appears Umbrella figured out how to program it for a specific task  - in this case, killing me." Carlos gazed at her skeptically. "Why you?" "Long story. The short answer is, I know too much. Anyway, I was hiding here, but..." Carlos finished for her. "But a gang of zombies showed up, making it hard for you to leave. Gotcha." Jill nodded. "What about you? You said you made it to the trolley, what you doing here?" "I ran into two other U.B.C.S. guys. One of mem got shot, he's still alive but not doing so great Mikhail. Nicholai  - that's the other one  - thought he knew where to get some explosives, so Mikhail and I went to the trolley to wait for him. It turns out that there's an evac on standby, if we can get to the clock tower and ring the bells. We ring, helicopters come."

He noticed Jill's expression and shrugged, grinning.

"Yeah, I know. It's some kind of computer signal, I don't know how it works. Great news, except to get the trolley running we're going to need a couple of things  - a power cable and one of those old-fashioned electrical fuses, to start with. Mikhail told me there was a repair shop over here; he's one of the platoon leaders, he got a good look at a map before we landed..."

Carlos frowned, then nodded to himself as if he'd solved some puzzle. "Nicholai must have seen a map, too, that would explain why he didn't need directions." "Carlos, Mikhail, Nicholai  - Umbrella doesn't dis-criminate based on nationality, does it?" Jill made the joke offhandedly, mostly to cover a deepening sense of unease. She thought Carlos was decent at heart, but two more Umbrella soldiers, one of them a platoon leader  - what were the odds that all three were stand-up guys who had been misled by their employer? Um-brella was the enemy, she couldn't lose focus of that. Carlos was already walking away, his attention fixed on the raised red car. "If they were doing any electrical checks, there should be... there, that's what I'm look-ing for!"

It seemed that Carlos had seen the cable he wanted in the tangle of cords and wires spilling out from under the hood, some of them hooked to machines Jill didn't recognize, some just trailing on the oily ce-ment. "Careful," Jill said, moving to join him as he reached up and grabbed one of the cables, dark green. She had an instinctive mistrust of electrical equipment and vaguely believed that people who messed around with wires were just asking to be electrocuted. "No problem," Carlos said easily. "Only a real ba-boso would leave any of these hooked up to the..."

Crack! An orange-white spark spat out from one of the trail-ing wires, loud and bright and as explosive as a gun-shot. Before Jill could draw breath, the cement floor was on fire  - no gradual build, no sense of expansion, it was just suddenly and completely ablaze, the flames two, three feet high and rising. "This way!" Jill shouted, running toward the open door that led into the office, the oil-fed fire blasting heat against her bare skin, when it hits the car's gas tank it's going to blow, we gotta get out of here...

Carlos was right behind her, and as they ran into the office, Jill felt her blood run cold. Screw the car, the car was nothing compared to what was going to happen when the fire got to the underground tanks in front of the station. A chain pulley hung next to the steel shutter that blocked the front door. Jill ran for it, but Carlos was one step ahead. He snatched the chain and pulled, hand over hand, the shutter inching slowly upward in spite of the frantic rattle of metal links. "Drop and crawl," Carlos said, raising his voice to be heard over the clanking, over the oceanlike rumble of spreading fire in the shop.

"Carlos, the tanks outside..." "I know, now move!"

The bottom of the shutter was a foot and a half from the ground. Jill dropped, flattening herself against the cold floor, shouting up to Carlos before she belly-crawled outside.

"Leave it, it's good enough!"

Then she was through, stumbling to her feet, reaching around to grab Carlos's hand and pulling him up after her. Inside the shop, something ex-ploded, a dull whoomp of sound, maybe a gas can or that cabinet full of machine oil, Jesus I must be cursed doomed something things keep blowing up around me... Carlos grabbed her arm, snapping her out of her wild-eyed freeze. "Come on!" She didn't need to be told twice. With the rising light pouring from the machine shop's windows, illuminat-ing in manic orange the heaped corpses of at least eight virus carriers, she ran, Carlos beside her. The gridlock was bad, the street jammed, no clear path for them to make time. Jill could feel the seconds fly as they struggled through the maze of dead metal and blank, staring glass. The first real explosion and the sound of shattering windows behind them was too close, we're not far enough yet, but all they could do was what they were doing  - that and pray that the fire would somehow miss the main tanks.

Maybe we should take cover, maybe we're out of the blast radius and...

Somehow, she didn't hear it  - or rather, she heard a sudden, total absence of sound. Too focused on wend-ing through the silent traffic in the dark, the rush of blood in her ears, the passing time, perhaps. All she knew was that she was running, and then there was a mammoth wave of pressure that boosted her from be-hind, lifting her up and forward at once, the side of a beaten panel truck rushing at her and Carlos screaming something  - and then there was nothing but blackness, nothing but a distant sun that lapped at the edges of her dark, sending her dreams of angry light.

Mikhail was sinking, descending into the fevered delirium that would undoubtedly kill him. All Nicholai had been able to get out of the dying man was that Car-los had gone to get equipment to repair the trolley, and that he would be back soon. If there was any more, Nicholai would have to wait until Mikhail's fever broke or Carlos returned, neither of which seemed likely. Mikhail was only going to get worse, and the deep, rumbling explosion that had quaked the ground beneath the trolley, that had preceded a lightening of the night sky to the north, suggested that there had been a fire at the gas station  - not necessarily Carlos's fault, but Nicholai suspected that it probably was, and that Carlos Oliveira had burned to a crisp.

Which means I'll have to find a power cable myself if I want a ride to the hospital.

Irritating, but it couldn't be helped. Nicholai had found a box of spare fuses inside the station, as well as a five-gallon container of properly mixed machine oil, more than enough to get the cable car to the hospital but no power cable, no wiring at all with which to by-pass the shorted circuits. Nicholai wondered why Carlos hadn't thought to break into the station's main-tenance room, and decided it was probably due to an absence of imagination.

"No... no, it can't... fire! Fire at will, I think... I think..."

Nicholai looked up from his inspection of the trolley'scontrol panel, curious, but whatever Mikhail thought waslost as he dropped back into a troubled slumber, the an-cient bench creaking beneath his restless movements. Pa-thetic. He could at least babble out something interesting.Nicholai stood and stretched, turning toward thedoor. He'd already added the oil to the engine's rudi-mentary tank system, but he'd taken the wrong land offuse. He'd get another one on his way back into town,probably all the way back to that same damned parkinggarage where he'd tracked Mikhail; he'd noticed someshelves of equipment there. All of the running back andforth was becoming tiresome, but at least most of thecannibals in the area had already been killed, so itwouldn't take too long  - and when he returned, hecould reward himself for his efforts by telling Mikhailwho was responsible for his impending death.He stepped out into the train's yard, thinkingvaguely about where he might sleep for the night,when he saw two figures stumbling toward the trolley,their forms half hidden in the sparse light from adying fire in the northwest corner of the yard. Theydrew closer, and he saw that Carlos had managed toescape death after all and had brought a woman withhim, undoubtedly the same woman who'd told himabout the trolley. Both were singed, their exposed skinreddened and grimy with ash; perhaps he hadn't beenthat far off the mark about who had started thatfire... and once again, let the games begin!"Carlos! Are you injured? Either of you?" Hestepped forward so they could see him clearly, couldsee the deep concern on his face.Carlos was obviously glad to see him. "No, I'm... we're both fine, just a little banged up. The gas stationcaught fire and blew. Jill blacked out for a minute ortwo, but she's..."

Carlos abruptly cleared his throat, nodding towardthe woman. "Uh, Jill Valentine, this is SergeantNicholai Ginovaef, U.B.C.S."Nicholai, please," he offered, and she stared at him, her expression unreadable. It seemed that Ms. Valentine wasn't interested in making friends. That pleased him, though he wasn't sure why. She carried a.357 revolver and had what looked like a 9mm tucked into the waist-band of an extremely snug skirt.

"We are indebted to you for telling Carlos about the trolley. You're with the police?" Nicholai asked. Jill's gaze was fixed on his, and there was no mistak-ing the tone of challenge in her response. "The police are dead. I'm with the S.T.A.R.S., Special Tactics and Rescue Squad." Well, well, how ironic. I wonder if she's encoun-tered Umbrella's little surprise yet... If she had, she probably wouldn't be standing in front of him; unless it was malfunctioning, a Tyrant could break a full-grown man in half without exerting even a quarter of its strength. Someone like Jill Valentine didn't stand a chance against something even more advanced, Umbrella's new toy that had been scheduled to ap-pear. Nicholai was pleased with the strange coincidence of meeting a S.T.A.R.S. member; it made him feel like everything was in order, that connections in his mind were reflected in the world around him...

"How's Mikhail?"

Nicholai looked away from Jill's unwavering stare to answer Carlos, not wanting to seem combative. "Not very well, I'm afraid. We should leave as soon as possi-ble. Did you find anything useful? Mikhail said you were going to get repair equipment." "It's all gone, burned up," Carlos said. "I guess we'll have to keep..." "Did you get your explosives?" Jill interrupted, still watching him carefully. "Where were they?" Not openly hostile, but very close; not surprising, considering. The inside line on the S.T.A.R.S. was that they had uncovered information about Umbrella's real research at the Spencer estate lab. They'd been discred-ited later, of course, but Umbrella had been trying to get rid of them ever since.

If they're all as suspicious as this one, it's no wonderUmbrella hasn 't succeeded."There weren't any explosives," he said slowly,abruptly deciding to push her a little, see how forth-right she was. "All I found were empty boxes. Ms.Valentine, is something bothering you? You seem... tense."

He deliberately shot a sharp glance at Carlos, as if angry that he'd brought the mistrustful woman along. Carlos flushed and quickly spoke up, trying to redirect the conversation.

"I think we're all on edge, but the important thing right now is Mikhail. We've got to get him out of here."

Nicholai held Jill's gaze a beat longer, then nodded and turned his attention to Carlos. "Agreed. If you can come up with a cable, I'll see what I can do about a fuse  - there's a power station not too far from here, I'll look there. Back at the garage where we found Mikhail, I'm sure I saw battery cables, you should try there. Re-gardless of our success, we meet back here in a half hour."

Carlos nodded. Nicholai made a point of ignoring Jill's response, addressing Carlos instead. "Good. I'll check on Mikhail before I go. Move out."

He turned back toward the cable car as though every-thing was settled, silently congratulating himself as he climbed aboard. They would fetch the cable for him, while all he had to do was walk a dozen steps into the trolley station and reach into a box.

Which means I'll have plenty of time left over. I won-der what they'll talk about when I'm not around...

Perhaps he'd arrange to meet them on their way back,watch them for a moment or two before revealing hispresence.Nicholai walked to where Mikhail was sleeping andgrinned at him, well pleased. Things were getting inter-esting, finally. Carlos was working for him, Mikhailwas at death's door, and the addition of the S.T.A.R.S.woman had thickened the plot, so to speak. He glancedout the trolley window and saw that the two of themhad already gone, disappearing back into the dark. JillValentine was suspicious of him, but only because ofwhat she knew about Umbrella; he was sure that shewould warm to him, given a little time.

"And if she doesn't, I'll kill her along with the rest ofyou," he said softly.Mikhail let out a soft sound of distress but slept on,and after a moment, Nicholai quietly left.