Underworld

REBECCA STRAPPED HERSELF INTO THE TINY seat of the tiny plane and looked out the window, wishing that David had chartered a jet. A giant, solid, can't-possibly-be-unsafe-'cause-it's-so-damned-big jet. From where she sat, she could see the propellers on the wing of the aircraft - propellers, like on a kid's toy.



Bet this puppy will sink like a rock, though, once it falls out of the sky at a few hundred miles an hour and slams into the ocean... "Just so you know, this is the kind of plane that's always killing rock stars and the like. Just as they make it off the ground, a big gust of wind knocks them right back down."



Rebecca looked up to see John's grinning face; he was hanging over the seats in front of her, his massive arms folded across the headrests. He probably needed two seats to himself; John wasn't just big, he was body-builder huge, two hundred forty pounds of mus- cle packed into his six-foot-six frame.



"We'll be lucky to get off at all, dragging your fat ass up there," Rebecca shot back, and was rewarded with a flash of concern in John's dark eyes. He'd broken a couple of ribs and punctured a lung on his last mission, less than three months before, and still wasn't up to pumping iron. For as burly and macho as John was, she knew he was vain about his looks, and had absolutely hated not being able to work out. John grinned wider, the deep brown of his skin crinkling. "Yeah, you're probably right; a few hun-dred feet off the ground and wham, that's all she wrote."



She never should have told him that this was only the second flight she'd ever been on (the first was when she accompanied David to Exeter for the mis- sion to Caliban Cove). It was exactly the kind of thing on which John got off cracking jokes... The plane started to rumble all around them, the engine whining up into a deep hum that made Rebecca grit her teeth. Damned if she was going to let John see how nervous she was; she looked back out the window and saw Leon and Claire walking toward the metal steps. Apparently, the weapons were all loaded up. "Where's David?" Rebecca asked, and John shrugged.



"Talking to the pilot. We've only got the one, you know, some friend of a friend of some guy in Arkan- sas. Not many pilots willing to smuggle people into Europe, I guess..."



John leaned closer, dropping his voice to a fake whisper, his grin fading. "I hear he drinks. We got him cheap 'cause he crashed some soccer team into the side of a mountain." Rebecca laughed, shaking her head. "You win. I'm terrified, okay?" "Okay. That's all I wanted," John said mildly, and turned around as Leon and Claire walked into the small cabin. They moved back to the middle of the plane, taking the two seats across the aisle from where Rebecca was sitting. David had mentioned that the area over the wings was the most stable, although it wasn't like there was that much of a choice - there were only twenty seats. "Ever flown before?" Claire asked, leaning out into the aisle, looking a little nervous herself. Rebecca shrugged. "Once. You?" "Couple of times, but always on big airliners, DC 747s or -27s, I forgot. I don't even know what this thing is." "It's a DHC 8 Turbo," Leon said. "I think. David mentioned it at some point..." "It's a killer, is what it is." John's deep voice floated over the seats. "A rock with wings." "John, sweetie... shut up," Claire said amiably.



John cackled, obviously pleased to have somebody new to play with. David appeared at the front of the cabin, stepping through the curtained area that led to the cockpit, and John broke off, their collective attention turning to-ward him. "It seems that we're ready to go," David said. "Our pilot, Captain Evans, has assured me that all systems are fully functional and we'll be taking off in just a moment. He's asked that we remain seated until he's given us leave to do otherwise. Um - the restroom is just back of the cockpit, and there's a small refrigera- tor at the rear of the plane with sandwiches and drinks..."



His voice trailed off, and he looked as if there was something else he wanted to say but wasn't sure what it was. It was a look that Rebecca had seen often enough in the past few weeks, a kind of uneasy uncertainty. Since the day that Raccoon had been blown to shit, she supposed they'd all had that look at one time or another...... because they shouldn't have been able to do it. That should have been the end, and it wasn 't, and now we're all more freaked out than any of us wants to admit.



When news of the disaster first hit the papers, they had all been so certain that this time Umbrella wouldn't be able to cover its tracks. The spill at the Spencer estate had been small, easy enough to write off after fire gutted the mansion and surrounding buildings; the facility at Caliban Cove had been on private land and was too isolated for anyone to know about - again, Umbrella had swept up the broken pieces and kept it quiet. Raccoon City, though. Thousands of people dead and Umbrella had walked away from it smell- ing like a rose, after planting false evidence and getting their scientists to lie for them. It should have been impossible; it had disheartened them all. What chance did a handful of fugitives have against a multi billion-dollar conglomerate that could kill an entire city and get away with it? David had decided not to say anything at all. He nodded briskly and then walked back to join them, pausing next to Rebecca's seat.



"Do you need some company?"



She could see that he was trying to be supportive and she could also see that he was tired. He'd been up late the night before, doublechecking every detail of their trip. "Nah, I'm okay," she said, smiling up at him, "and



I've always got John to talk me through it." "You know it, baby," John called loudly, and David nodded, giving her shoulder a light squeeze before moving to the seats behind her. He needs the rest. We all do, and it's a long flight -



-so why do I have the feeling that we're not going to get any?



Nerves, that was all. The engine sound got louder, higher, and with a stuttering jerk, the plane started to move forward. Rebecca clutched the arm rests on either side and closed her eyes, thinking that if she had the guts to go up against Umbrella, she could certainly survive a plane ride. Even if she couldn't, it was too late to change her mind; they were on their way, no turning back. They'd been in the air for only twenty minutes, and already Claire was nodding off, half-leaning against Leon's shoulder. Leon was tired, too, but knew he wasn't going to get to sleep so easily. He was hungry, for one thing - and then there was the fact that he still wasn't sure if he was doing the right thing.



Great time to think about it, now that you're pretty much committed, his mind whispered sarcastically. Maybe you could just ask them to drop you off in London or something, you could hang out in a pub until they're all finished... or dead. Leon told himself to shut up, sighing a little. He was committed; what Umbrella had been doing wasn't just criminal, it was evil - or at least as close to evil as some money-grubbing corporate dickheads could get. They'd murdered thousands, created bioweapons ca- pable of murdering billions, wiped out his carefully planned future and been responsible for the death of Ada Wong, a woman he'd respected and liked. They'd helped each other through some rough spots on that terrible night in Raccoon; without her, he never would have gotten out alive. He believed in what David and his people were doing, and it wasn't that he was afraid, that wasn't it at all... Leon sighed again. He'd given the matter a hell of a lot of thought since he and Claire and Sherry had stumbled away from the burning city, and the only real reason he could come up with was so stupid that he didn't want to credit it. Standing against Umbrella was the right thing to do - it was that he didn't feel qualified to be there.



Yep, that's pretty stupid.



Maybe it was, but it was holding him back, mak- ing him feel uncertain, and he needed to examine it.



David Trapp had made a career of the S.T.A.R.S., only to watch the organization fall under the control of Umbrella; he'd lost two close friends on a mission to infiltrate a bioweapons testing facility, as had John Andrews. Rebecca Chambers had just been starting out in the S.T.A.R.S., but she was some kind of scientific child prodigy with a deep interest in Um- brella's work; that and the fact that she'd been through more than anyone else made her continued dedication understandable. Claire wanted to find her brother, the only family she had; their parents were dead, and the two of them were close. Chris, Jill, and Barry he'd never met, but he was sure they had compelling reasons of their own; he knew Barry Burton's wife and children had been threatened, Rebecca had mentioned it... And what about Leon Kennedy? He'd stumbled into the fight without a clue, a cop fresh out of the academy on his way to his first day at work - which just happened to be with the Raccoon PD. There was Ada, true - but he'd known her less than half a day, and she had been killed just after admitting to him that she was some kind of an agent, sent to steal a sample of an Umbrella virus.



So I lost a job, and a possible relationship with a woman I barely knew and couldn't trust. Of course Umbrella should be stopped... but do I belong here?



He'd decided to become a cop because he wanted to help people, but he'd always figured that meant keeping the peace - busting drunk drivers, breaking up bar fights, catching crooks. Never in his wild-est dreams would he have figured on being caught up in an international conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger infiltration-type stuff against a giant company that made war monsters. It was crime on a much bigger scale than he felt he was ready for...... and is that the real reason, Officer Kennedy? At exactly that moment, Claire mumbled some- thing from her light doze, nuzzling her head against his arm before falling silent and still again - and making Leon uncomfortably aware of another facet to his involvement with the ex-S.T.A.R.S. Claire. Claire was... she was an incredible woman. In the days after their escape from Raccoon City, they'd talked a lot about what had happened, the experiences they'd had both separately and together. At the time, it had felt like an exchange of information, filling in blanks - she'd told him about her run-in with Chief Irons and the creature she'd called Mr. X, and he'd told her all about Ada and the terrible thing that had once been William Birkin. Between them, they'd been able to come up with a continuous story, with infor- mation that was important to the fugitive team. In retrospect, though, he could see that those long, rambling conversations had been essential for an- other reason entirely - they'd been a way to leach out the poison of what had happened to them, like talking out a bad dream. If he'd had to keep it all inside, he thought, he might have gone crazy. In any case, the feelings he had for her now were convoluted ones - warmth, connection, dependence, respect, others that he had no name for. And that scared him, because he'd never felt so strongly about anyone before and because he wasn't sure how much of it was real and how much was just some kind of a post-traumatic stress thing.



Face it, stop bullshitting yourself. What you're really afraid of is that you're only here because she is, and you don't like what that says about you.



Leon nodded inwardly, realizing that it was the truth, the real reason behind his uncertainty. He'd always believed that want was okay, but need? He didn't like the idea of being led around by some neurotic compulsion to be close to Claire Redfield.



And what if it isn't need? Maybe it's want, and you just don't know it yet...



He scowled at his own pathetic attempts at self- analysis, deciding that maybe it would be best just to stop worrying about it so much. Whatever the reason for becoming involved, he was involved - he could kick ass with the best of them and Umbrella deserved to have their ass kicked, big time. For now, he had to pee, and then he was going to eat something and do his best to catch some sleep. Leon gently moved out from beneath Claire's warm, heavy head, doing his best not to wake her up. He slid out into the aisle, glancing around at the others. Rebecca was staring out her window, John was flipping through a muscle mag, David was dozing. They were all good people, and thinking that made him feel a little easier about things.



They're the good guys. Hell, I'm a good guy, fighting for truth, justice, and fewer viral zombies in the world...



The bathroom was in the front. Leon started to- ward it, steadying himself by touching each seat as he passed, thinking that the steady drone of the plane's engine was a soothing sound, like a waterfall -



-and then the curtain at the front of the cabin was pushed open, and a man stepped out, a tall, smiling man in an expensive-looking trench coat. He wasn't the pilot, and there wasn't anyone else on the plane, and Leon felt his mouth go dry with an almost superstitious dread even though the thin, smiling man didn't seem to be armed. "Hey!" Leon shouted, backing up a step. "Hey, we got company!" The man grinned, his eyes twinkling. "Leon Ken-nedy, I presume," he said softly, and Leon was suddenly absolutely sure that whoever he was, this man was trouble with a capital "T."