Her boots hammer against cracked concrete, the sound echoing through corridors that haven't seen maintenance in three decades. Rust bleeds down the walls in long streaks where pipes overhead drip condensation that pools in the uneven floor, and the air tastes like mold and old death.

Bastard. Lying bastard.

The intercom crackles overhead.

Her heart slams against her ribs. Sweat soaks through her tactical vest, stinging the cuts on her arms. Her lungs burn—fifty-four years old, twenty-eight years in the field, and she's still fast, still lethal, but God she's tired. Adrenaline keeps her moving, but it won't last forever.

"You're heading east." Rodger's voice is sharp now. Detached like he's narrating a nature documentary. "The Elpis samples are in Sub-Level Three. Storage Wing C."

Diana doesn't answer. She vaults over a collapsed section of railing, lands hard on the other side. Pain shoots through her knee—old injury from Edonia, never healed right—but she keeps moving. The corridor ahead splits into three directions. She chooses left. Narrower passage, fewer sight lines for the Hunters.

Thirteen rounds left in the Beretta. Two spare magazines. Not enough.

"You're angry," Rodger continues, his voice following her through the next speaker.

Shut up. Shut up.

She rounds a corner and nearly collides with a T-virus zombie—ancient, decayed, barely held together by dried sinew. It lunges. Diana sidesteps, drives her combat knife through its temple, keeps running. The corpse collapses behind her.

Twenty-eight years. Twenty-eight years she believed she survived because she was smart, because she was tough, because she earned it. Twenty-eight years thinking Rodger Lawless was a frightened corporate pencil-pusher who helped her escape.

Every second was a lie.

Chris was right.

The thought hits her like a gut punch. Chris, who left the BSAA because he saw what it was becoming. Chris, who warned her. Chris, who told her the mission was wrong, that the organization was using bioweapons to fight bioweapons, that she was being manipulated.

And she chose the mission anyway. Chose authority.

Just like she did in 1998.

"You'll die down here, Diana." Rodger's voice sharpens, cutting through the static. "Just like you were always supposed to."

She skids to a halt.

An intercom speaker mounted on the wall ahead. Rodger's voice still droning through it, cold and clinical and satisfied.

"Accept it. You were never meant to survive the Arklay Mountains. You were supposed to die gathering data for my Hunters. But you didn't. And that made you even more valuable."

Diana stares at the speaker like she may explode it with her mind.

"You can't escape what you are. You can't escape what I made you—"

Then she raised the weapon and fires.

The speaker explodes in a shower of sparks and shattered plastic. The sound echoes through the corridor—sharp, final, defiant. Silence floods the passage.

She lowers the Beretta, breathing hard.

Try me.