A/N: It has certainly been a while, but what better way to make a comeback than to post an update on my longest running story to date.

Sit back, and enjoy the ride folks!

Disclaimer: I don't own Resident Evil.

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." - Napoleon Bonaparte

They both ran side by side as quickly as their legs could take them. Ethan knew that as long as Alexia and Wesker were around their chances of survival was nearly non-existant. And as much as he wanted to take out both of them, ensuring that Chris, Claire and himself regrouped took priority.

"Claire!" Chris shouted, banging his fist on every door they passed. It didn't matter, his shouting; if Alexia was even half as powerful as the traveler knew she was, she already knew where they were...where Claire was.

"Gotta find her and fast." Ethan thought. A door ahead banged open and a couple zombies stumbled out, he raised his FAMAS and fired two quick shots putting them both down as the two former STARS ran past their downed bodies.

Through a familiar hallway, another Spencer estate copy, through a door that opened into some kind of shadowy prison, holding cells lining the walls...and somebody could be heard crying behind one of the closed doors.

Ethan and Chris stopped running and listened, trying not to breathe, tuning out the relentless banging of a virus carrier locked in another cell. Another gasping wail on the other side confirmed their suspicions

"Here," said the traveler as he approached the closest door and kicked it open, doing a quick sweep before they both entered...and saw Claire sitting on the floor, sobbing, her arms wrapped around a young man, his naked body bruised and pale...dead.

"Fuck...we were too late." Ethan thought lowering his weapon, knowing that the man Claire was holding was Steve Burnside. His demise more than likely brought on by T-Veronica and sacrificing himself for the young woman's life.

"Claire?" Chris asked gently, slowly approaching his sister and crouching down beside her. He looked to be sharing her heartbreak in seeing her so distraught, but knowing their situation was dire and they needed to get moving. "We have to go now, Claire," he said, as gently as possible and was relieved when she nodded, carefully laying her friend down, closing his eyes with one trembling hand.

She kissed him on the forehead and then stood up. "Okay," she said, nodding again. "I'm ready."

Claire didn't look back, and in spite of everything, Ethan could tell that Chris was proud of her. Hell, so was he. She was strong, stronger than he would have been if he'd been asked to leave someone he had cared about.

Together, the three of them ran back into the hall, from what he knew of the layout, Ethan figured they had to be close to the southwest corner of the building, where Chris had landed the jet and they'd seen the emergency evacuation elevator.

The self-destruct system was presumably close enough to the elevator to make a fast escape possible; if they could just get to that elevator, he'd check every floor on the way up.

There were stairs at the south end of the hall, and Chris ran for them, Claire at his side with Ethan bringing up the rear covering their backs. He could feel the seconds ticking past as they hurried up the steps, felt like time was closing in on them, that Alexia was finished playing her little game.

Through the door at the top of the stairs, running out onto a giant metal grid platform, and Chris laughed out loud when he looked behind them and saw the nondescript doors of the emergency elevator.

"What?" Claire asked.

He motioned at the doors, grinning. "That'll take us straight to the jet."

Claire nodded, not smiling but she looked relieved. "Good. Let's go."

Ethan shook his head as he turned back to look at the wall across from them. "We've got to check something first," he said, wanting to take a closer look at the security door.

Chris nodded in agreement, knowing what the young man had in mind before turning back to his sister. "You go, We'll be right there."

"Forget it," Claire said firmly, her eyes red from crying but her chin set and determined. "No way we're splitting up again."

Ethan nodded, knowing that they wouldn't be able to change her mind as he leaned down to look at the door's locking mechanism.

He knew that they were close to the self-destruct system. But the lock was complicated and unique, requiring a key he knew of but didn't have.

"Hey, wait a sec," Claire said and began rummaging through the small pack around her waist. A moment later she was holding up a slender metal key, shaped like a dragonfly. "I found it back at Rockfort," she said, bending over and pressing it into the indentation on the lock. It fit perfectly, the lock releasing with a solid metallic clink.

"You're going to set off the self-destruct, aren't you," Claire said, not really a question looking back at the two men. "Do you have the code?"

Chris didn't really answer, thinking that there were an amazing number of coincidences in life, and sometimes, they worked to one's advantage.

"Code Veronica," he said softly, and pulled the door open, ready to take it all down.

"Wait." The Redfields stopped and watched as Ethan approached a door to the right of the one they were about to go through where a locked-down launcher was located. Grabbing the bar holding it down that was labeled 'emergency release only', he tore the metal away and picked up the powerful weapon.

"Now...let's burn this fucking place down." he said darkly.

X

The boy was dead, but the girl wasn't.

And now the young men were trying to destroy Alexia's home. Now it wasn't a game or an experiment or something to observe, they all had to die, in pain and misery.

How had they dared to consider such a thing? They all should be on his knees in front of her, worthless supplicants for her to do with as she wished, how dare they?

Alexia saw the siblings and the unique specimen walking away from their treacherous deed, felt them wishing to leave as the automated sequence began, lights and sounds flashing, systems shutting down throughout the terminal.

Their perfidy was useless, of course. She would be able to stop the destruct sequence with a minimum of effort, using her control over the organic to sever every connection in the facility, but it was the thought behind the act that so infuriated her. They had witnessed the glory of her capabilities, they had seen it and fled in terror...and yet they could fancy themselves worthy to take a life such as hers?

Alexia gathered herself, drawing all of her power in, becoming complete. She knew that the unique one had picked up a weapon that had been sitting next to the security door, a launcher that someone had left behind.

She didn't object, knowing that the firearm would give him and the siblings hope, and that for a victory to be complete, the victor had to take everything. She would take his hope, she would take the lives of his friends, and then she would take his.

When she was whole, she imagined herself becoming liquid, traveling through the structure of her surroundings as easily as the organic extensions she controlled, and then she was doing so, moving to confront the interlopers.

The siblings were startled, as if they'd expected to succeed. But the other male, he didn't so much as flinch, the rifle in his hands trained on her with a sharp focus etched into his features.

Alexia was mildly surprised when she saw the iris' of his eyes shift to red from their natural blue

She slid out from inside her organic carrier, unfolding herself, turning to look into their eyes. She watched them watch her, curious in spite of her anger.

They argued in front of her, the older male insisting that he and the unique one would "handle" things, that the girl should flee. The girl accepted, but reluctantly, insisting in turn that they should survive.

Following that ludicrous statement, the girl turned and ran for the elevator.

Alexia moved to intercept, raising her hand to smite the girl...

...several perforations opened in her flesh, distracting her. Bullets entered her body in repatition. She turned and smiled at the younger male who leered back with a scowl, reaching into herself, she pulled the bullets out and tossed them toward him.

As gratifying as the expression of the girl's brother was, she found her gone by the time she turned back.

It was time to expand her boundaries, Alexia decided.

To show them what she was, what she could do...and to put the fear of God into both, because as she closed her eyes, imagining, wishing, she stopped being Alexia Ashford and became Wrath, divine and merciless.

X

"THE SELF-DESTRUCT SEQUENCE HAS BEEN ACTIVATED!" The recording droned throught the facility's PA system, reverberating through the room. "YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES THIRTY SECONDS TO REACH MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE!"

The noise combined with the sirens and flashing emergency lights, would have put anyone on sensory overload. But for Ethan, he was more focused on the psychotic and very deadly female that had made herself known infront of him and the Redfields.

When Alexia raised her hand to hit Claire, he didn't hesitate. A stream of 5.56 slugs roared from the barrel of his rifle, the gunfire heard clear over the self-destruct alarms as they peppered the woman's body.

Claire was already at the elevator after Chris convinced her to run, pushing the button and stepping inside when Alexia smiled at him. Lifting one of her slender gray hands and pushed it into her body, the flesh melding seamlessly, flowing like water as removed the bullets and gently tossing them in his direction.

"Bad, this is very, very bad..." Chris muttered under his breath, the .357 he found in the computer room where they started the self-destruct clenched tight in his hands and aimed forward just as the woman started to change.

The lithe gray female crouched on the metal grid and her liquid flesh started to tremble, to form tiny peaks and dips all across her body, the tissue bubbling, expanding. The peaks became mountains, the dips, valleys, all of it gray and swelling as her limbs started to fold in on themselves.

Her arms curved over and joined the growing mass, the legs disappearing into it, the tex-ture turning rough and striated, veins like cables rising, and she kept swelling. Her head rolled down and became part of the giant, rounded body of her, gray becoming muscle-tissue red, the purple and blue of blood vessels networking across like a tide.

The PA continued to announce the countdown, but neither Ethan or Chris paid any attention to it as they began backing away. The elevator was blocked, and she just kept getting bigger.

Thick tentacles pushed out from beneath the elephan-tine mass, undulating like waves, spreading out across the platform. The thing, the massive, tumorous thing suddenly rose up as if unbending from some non-existent waist, spreading giant wings, a dragonfly's wings, raising a contorted and deformed half human face.

The face opened its mouth and a gigantic roaring shriek spilled out, the wings trembling from the raw power of the sound, and then it spit at them, a thin stream of yellow-green bile.

"MOVE!" Ethan roared, shoving Chris aside as the fluid splashed the wall they had their backs to and began to eat through the metal.

"Shit!" Chris shouted, and barely jumped out of the way as one of the tentacles slashed forward. The traveler bringing his FAMAS up and squeezing the trigger, emptying the rest of the clip into Alexia's mutated form, hitting anything that looked important that could cause her the most damage...

...and from rounded, quivering pink spheres that had grown up around the base of the giant body, moving things began to crawl out.

"Chris! Split up!" Ethan called out as they went in opposite directions, keeping the giant BOW distracted from different points as they fired on her.

Chris ran to the farthest corner from the Alexia-thing and raised the .357, not sure where to shoot. The small subcreatures were landing on the platform, some like flat, rounded rocks with tentacles, some like beetles, some like nothing he'd ever seen before, and they were all coming toward him, moving fast.

He could hear Ethan shooting again, the creature swinging around and shooting another blast of bile the younger male's direction that he managed to avoid. That's when Chris saw her wings fluttering on her back.

Seeing his chance, he took aim and fired...

... and the pulsating, bloated creature was screaming again, this time in pain, one of her wings fluttering down to the platform after the powerful round tore through it.

When Alexia turned to attack Chris, another of her wings was shot off thanks to Ethan. Who's attention went straight for the small organisms that had reached him, one of the beetle creatures leaping onto his leg, trying to climb up.

Smacking it off, then stomping on a second one, the traveler caught a tentacle swining at his face, shot from one of the rounded stone shapes on the main body.

Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, he caught the tentacle. Drawing his knife in his other hand as he sliced it off, splashing green-ish blood everywhere while the monster screeched in pain.

"We need to finish this." Ethan thought, seeing Chris on the other side of the room fending off the small creatures Alexia was unleashing while the countdown continued in the background.

Eyes flashing, he quickly drew the linear launcher and took aim at the creature's swollen guts;

"HEY BITCH!" he shouted, Alexia swung her head around and shrieked at him. "EAT THIS!" A fury of white light and heat leaped from the barrel, blowing into the fat belly like an arrow into a balloon.

The effect was huge, the explosion monstrous.

A fountain of blood and gray jelly splatted out from the gaping, ragged hole, backsplattering onto his face, but he only had eyes for the screaming Alexia-beast as its flesh and bone form gave out, deflating.

The upper body of the creature was trying to pull free from the dying mass, the two wings flailing frantically at the air, but with only two, it couldn't free itself...

It was dying, he knew because he could see its blood draining away, because the color of its horrid flesh was changing, turning the color of ash, the subcreatures shriveling with the death of their 'mother'.

With one last shuttering breath, Alexia fell silent and began to sag, her features dripping in all directions like a melted candle.

Ethan waited a couple seconds, making sure that the BOW didn't rise again before tossing the spent launcher aside. Chris jogged over to join him, taking in the now dead Alexia Ashford.

"YOU HAVE FOUR MINUTES TO REACH MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE!" the computer warned, bringing both men back to the present.

"Claire!" Chris exclaimed, the both of them taking off to the elevator that had returned. Riding it to the proper floor and taking off down the dark tunnels that would take them back to the hanger.

When they rounded the corner ahead of them, both men skidded to a stop. Finding Claire being restrained by the last person either of them wanted to see.

"Wesker..." Ethan hissed, his rifle aimed at the man but unable to fire without risk of hitting Claire.

Wesker smirked as he started dragging the young woman through a hole that had been blown in the wall. "CLAIRE!" Chris shouted running after them with Ethan right on his heels.

The corridor beyond was dark, save for the red flashing of the warning lights that illuminated the dozen or so undead that were lumbering toward the duo.

Ethan's rifle registered along with Chris' shotgun, neither of them stopping their sprints as they popped each zombie in the head as they ran ahead. The traveler ducking down and using his strength to lift and fling one of the carriers over his shoulder where it smashed headfirst on the concrete behind him.

When they reached the end, they smashed through the metal double doors and found themselves in an ice-cavern that had been converted into a docking area. A large submarine sitting in the frozen water off to the left, and several meters infront of them stood Wesker, holding Claire by the back of the neck as he smirked at the two men.

"Congradulations, gentlemen." the man said, adjusting his sunglasses, "It turns out Alexia's work wasn't all that valuable afterall. So now, the only thing left...is revenge."

"Let her go Wesker!" Chris demanded, grip tight on his shotgun but keeping himself still.

"And why would I want to do something like that?" Wesker asked casually, yanking on Claire's neck, making her yelp in pain. "The way I see it, I have something over y-"

Whatever else he was going to say was cut off by a single gunshot. The man in black snapped his head to the side, avoiding the shot Ethan fired at him, smirking at the desperate attempt. "Is that really the best-"

Once again he was cut off when a fist connected hard with his face, his sunglasses shattering under the impact as he was sent skidding back several feet.

Claire stumbled when Wesker's grip on her vanished, falling into Ethan's arms a he immidately moved back beside Chris who swept her into his arms. The traveler keeping his rifle trained on their enemy as the cavern around them shook.

"Chris, take Claire and head back to the jet." Ethan said, his now red gaze locked onto Wesker who was leering right back with his own demonic-like eyes through the broken lenses of his glasses.

"What?! Are you nuts!?" the former pointman exclaimed, "No! We're all getting out of here!"

Ethan shot a look at him, making him go silent almost instantly. "Trust me. I'll meet you both there." he turned back to Wesker who had taken off his ruined glasses and tossed them aside.

"Ethan..." Claire started just before Wesker sprinted toward them, his body nothing more than a blur as he crossed the distance fast.

"GO!" the traveler shouted as he opened fire. Wesker blurred out of sight, avoiding the bullets as they hit the metal equipment and walls of ice.

The Redfield siblings hesitated a moment, the ice cave shaking around them bringing them out of it before running to the exit. "You better meet up with us." Chris said strongly before he and Claire disappeared.

Ethan didn't reply, but heard the man loud and clear while he swept his rifle around the docking area. Sharp eyes and ears searching for the villain as he treaded along.

"You know, today's a good day" Wesker's voice echoed around him. "I came for Alexia. But Steve Burnside will be just as good. Thankfully the T-Veronica still exists within his corpse."

"Hard to perform any experiments if your own corpse is cooling off." the traveler fired back, spinning around when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and moving over to a generator.

Wesker chuckled, picking up a large hunk of metal with ease as he moved silently out of sight. "You act as though you can kill me. Your last attempt ended in failure, what makes you believe that you will succeed a second time?"

Ethan strained his ears, hoping to figure out where the man was hiding while he moved along the wall of the generator. Keeping his back covered as he moved, unaware that his opponent was on the opposite side, makeshift weapon in hand as he crept along, waiting to get the drop on the younger man.

Reaching the corner, Wesker tightened his grip on the metal, eyes blazing as he quickly blurred around to the other side and swinging hard...

Only to hit open air.

The villain blinked, scanning left and right finding the traveler nowhere in sight.

A split second later Ethan reappeared on the side Wesker had just been on and fired his rifle. The man having a split second to bring up the metal, the round punching into it and sending him pitching back out of sight.

Running to confirm a hit, the traveler found the slab laying on the ground with a large dent in it, but no Wesker.

Slowly moving out into the open again, Ethan started looking again. Vaguely aware of the self-destruct countdown and the shaking of the cavern as he searched for his target. Sweeping the FAMAS everywhich way while letting his senses extend in the hope of locating him and ending this.

A few small pieces of ice and a small dusting of snow fell on his shoulder, the traveler froze just before his mind screamed in alarm. He quickly leapt forward, rolling out of the way just as Wesker slammed into the ground where he had been standing, fist burrowing into the metal floor.

Back to his feet, Ethan aimed at the villain's head. "You were honestly one of the best and brightest in STARS." said Wesker, "It's a shame that you wouldn't follow a better path, you could have been so much more."

The teen glowered in return, "I'm better off as I am, not some sideshow freak on a powertrip."

Wesker didn't rise to the barb, instead cracking his knuckles and smirking. "If that's the case, then lets settle this."

Ethan lowered his rifle, aiming it at the ceiling and firing the last shot in the clip before tossing it to the side. "This time. I'll make fucking sure you STAY dead."

They stood motionless for a beat or two before launching at one another at superhuman speeds. Both intending on killing the other within the next few minutes.

A/N: Tired of my cliffhangers yet? The war against Umbrella is coming to a close quickly, but not before Ethan and Wesker have their rematch. Get ready for a good throwdown next time guys! Until then review and show your love!