Time passed in relative safety as the People in the Red Queen's Chamber were waiting for the next objective to appear. Although they dreaded that it might force them to go out, they were quite happy with themselves and if they others outside did the objective for them, they would be even happier.

-Whose turn is it now?

-It's the Red's

They were sitting down playing cards, for some reason Nick had all sorts of stuff to pass time, only he didn't have food and they were both thirsty and hungry in there, but they were too afraid to go out and search for food.

The A.I. seemed rather amused by these people, they appeared to be wastes to society, with no moral values at all, they would happily let their fellow team mates die if it meant their own survival, they didn't even ask what the others outside were doing, to the Queen however they were the perfect servants, they would happily do what the Queen said and not even ask why they had to do so.

Her good times however had to end as those bothersome guys had arrived. Chris and the others after looting all the equipment of the now dead soldiers had quickly made their way there and they did have two EMP devices on the ready if things didn't go well in their negotiations.

"Red Queen we need to talk!"

Alice was the one whom said so, which may sound weird, be she knew full well of the existance of the A.I.

For some reason after she got her memories back, she's been a bit bossy, but she was also the strongest out of all of them and could dispatch zombies as if they were kittens. The others could only sit and watch as she took care of all the zombies by herself as they headed towards the Red Queen's Chamber.

"Queen, what's going on outside?"

George asked, since all they could hear from so far away was some muffled sound.

"The others that left, want to come back"

The Red Queen stated with a voice of a mischievous child.

-So what's the big dead?

-But, I don't want them back

The people there felt a bit uneasy, especialy since now they felt trapped in that room that was supposed to be safe before. It's like thinking that you're safe and free while in reality being inside a prison cell.

-Queen, why not invite them inside, I'm sure they just want to be safe

-No they wish to control me, they even brought that thing with them

-I'm sure this is all a misunderstanding, I know that Kaplan tried to do it before, but that was because we didn't know you well, they were afraid of you and...

-Lies! they are bad people and you are a bad person, if you want me to let them inside!

"George, let me talk to her, I'm sure that as girls we have more in common"

Xiao suddenly offered, then she Chrysa and Dawn begun to talk with the A.I. only to give up entirely after they understood one small detail.

The Red Queen was not a girl, it was an A.I. with a personality, it's objective was simple and unlike them, it registered the people outside as a threat to itself and the facility, it wouldn't even be strange if it activated the lasers on them.

Outside the facility the camera was zooming in and out on Alice and the people behind her. Trying its best to find a way to take them out, but it had only limited options as Kaplan was already hacking into its systems.

"There's a problem with the network, the Red Queen has strengthened its firewall, I'm sure that the idiots inside did something to help the A.I. grow stronger"

Kaplan said as he did his best to keep up with the stream of changing data, he could barely tell apart the code of the Red Queen and the system, during the reboot, the Red Queen deleted all backdoors and indicators he had left and changed the files so much that he had to hack the system from scratch again. It wasn't hard, just time consuming and now that he knew the extend of the Red Queen's abilities he was even more determined.

"I asked you nicely"

Alice said as she looked at the Camera on the ceiling, looking at them, before shooting a hole into it, this gunshot caused everyone inside the Red Queen's chamber to panic.

"Alice You're destroying our own Defenses!"

Kaplan complained.

-No I'm blinding a powerful enemy

-You think she can't see what we're doing?

-Even if she can see, she can do nothing about it, I'm going to break all her sensors and lets see what she can do

-Wait I need those!

-Do you think she'll just give up, unless we show who's boss...

-Alice it's just a program!

-You already proved it's more than a simple program, it manipulated the people inside to become in quotes stronger?

-You don't understand all it did was overclock some of its systems, it's not as if it can do anything other than operate the the Hive

-Are you positive?

-Do you think a toaster can do anything other than making toasts?

It wasn't that Alice couldn't understand the logic behind his words, the Red Queen was just a machine, why however she felt so threatened by this machine was beyond her understanding.

"Do you think the negotiations will go well?"

J.D. asked Rain as they stood there and watched the show.

Suddenly George came out of the Hallway with his hands up.

"Don't shoot, the Queen wishes to negotiate, please let me pleed not to bully her, we need her to survive"

"Is this guy for real?"

J.D. was amazed by how stupid George sounded, but he was cut a peg by Alice.

-We agree to not bully her, but we need her to keep this person safe

-How on earth did the beggar end like that?

-The beggar?

-Oh, sorry, it's just that I can't remember his name and the only thing remarkable about him was his unkept appearance, don't mind me I will take him inside, so please don't EMP the facility

-Aren't you going to accomplish the Objective or whatever you guys are after?

-We don't have to risk everyone's lives for that, all we need is one person to reach the goal, the rest will pass by default

-Then why bother sending 11 people, all they needed was send a competent person and all the objectives would be complete

-Don't ask me, all I know is that we have some objectives, by the way do you by chance have some water and food?

They threw some military rations and a few bottles of water to him as they left Olga and Chris in his care overlooking that the three successfuly entered the Vault at the other side of the hallway.

"Now it's time to be going up"

Alice said as she looked at Jason and the others, whom gulped some saliva, unsure if they had made the right choice.

Inside the Red Queen's Chamber Everyone was rejoiced to see some food and water, as for Chris and the Woman with the gun, they didn't care at all about them, only the old man approached to ask if he could help, but was dismissed since he had no medical expertise at all.

George felt a bit jealous at first, since Chris had a woman caring for him, but once he saw his wounds, he considered himself lucky to not being in his place.

Chris looked like frankenstein's monster, his shoulder crushed and his hand sewed to his body, he couldn't even imagine what the guy had went through.

Of course one could argue that most of it was his own fault, because of his own dangerous actions and decisions, overestimating himself and acting haphazardly.

"Do you think she likes him?"

Dawn asked Xiao as the two teenage girls had nothing better to do than talk about others in their group, Chrysa was also interested in this, but they could only speculate what this NPC woman might be thinking about as she looked at the sleeping Chris.

"George don't be so depressed about him, once the mission is over, if he survives, all those wounds will be healed and I will get my gun and items back"

Nick stated as he, George and the Old man were discussing Chris' situation, of course everyone could hear them since they were talking openly, not hiding anything.

"Doesn't that mean that we can do whatever we like as long as we don't die?"

The old man asked, but to his words Nick begun to laugh.

"Do you think that you'll always be as lucky as him, having people to save his ass while he's bedridden?"

Nick's answer struck a nerve in Olga's mind, but thinking back to Chris' actions, it was bizzare how much he disregarded life and death. It was as if he wanted to die and yet resisted death stronger than any, Olga found him rather fascinating. A pity that he probably wouldn't even make it through the night, even with all the medicine she had brought with herself there was no way he could survive and his having taken the anti-virus, him becoming a zombie was impossible.

"What if that guy becomes a zombie?"

Suddenly Xiao asked her friend, her words however caused everyone to panic.

"He's taken the Anti-virus he won't turn!"

Olga said angrily, but to her words came an answer that could bring despair.

"Technicaly the anti-virus was never proven to work all it does it cause people to mutate, if he's lucky he might retain his human form and gain some super powers, but the chances of him turning into some sort of monstrosity is still there"

George said, pouring cold water onto her beliefs and hopes.

"The Anti-Virus works, but it has to be taken before the virus has spread too far, I can tell that he's not infected, but as he's now He's too dangerous to be let go from the hive, his immune system is too weak and the Anti-Virus gives no immunity to the virus, it just kills it in its bud, once it spreads nothing can stop it"

The Red Queen explained, but her explaination caused Medic to falter for a moment.

"Then what about those Licker monsters, we gave them the Anti-Virus, did they die or not?"

Medic asked really panicked.

"The Lickers are in a life and death struggle, as long as I keep providing them nutrients, they will eventualy evolve and overcome the Anti-Virus, but half of them have already died due to my reboot being too slow"

The Red queen explained.

"Why not just let them die?"

George asked, somewhat fearful of the Lickers evolving into even greater monsters than they already are.

"My orders were to keep the facility operational and contain the Virus within the bounds of the facility"

The Red Queen said, making everyone else uncomfortable.

"Queen, how are the others doing?"

George suddenly asked, wishing to change the theme of the discussion to something less depressing.

At the time Alice was leading the group on a wild goose chase, the reason was simple, there were too many zombies. The mogue held more than 1200 corpses and all of them had risen to life now, it was a fool's dream to escape the Hive unscratched. Even Alice could tell that the three tourists wouldn't be able to make it, they weren't either as daring as Chris or Matt nor trained soldiers like Rain, J.D and Kaplan.

"Retreat!"

Alice shouted as a Wave of Zombies had located them, all they could do now was shoot as many of them as they could while they retreated back to the Red Queen's Chamber, where they begun.

It was Ironic that they couldn't travel even half the distance from where they had come, they couldn't even hope to reach the West Medical facility, while going up the stairs would be easier said than done.

"We need some rest, It's been an hour, my feet hurt!"

Hera complained as she was getting a piggyback ride by Jason, whom did his best to keep up with the group. Jonas was lagging behind, but he did his best to not lose the head of the group, it was a really chaotic retreat, it wouldn't be strange even if they had lost someone.

Before long they had reached the Red Queen's chamber once more, this time the Red Queen was the first to send them George to ask what they wanted. George had become her emissary, probably being the only person she didn't care about enough, or trusted more than the others.

Before long everyone was sitting in the Red Queen's chamber, waiting until the the second objective was over, maybe then they could gather a more competent group. Also at the moment they didn't even know what the next objective was, maybe it didn't even have to do with escaping the facility, maybe it was something else.

George spent a considerable amount of time talking to Alice and Matt, whom were surprised to find that he knew all about them. Now she didn't doubt why Chris called him the group's leader. Even the Red Queen found him to her liking, at least most of the time, the other half she was bullying him and calling him names, to which he acted as if he was hurt, making the atmosphere in the room less depressive than it really was.

What they discovered was rather interesting, but sad at the same time, in a simple phrase, the tourists were forced to work for some even more high-tech organization and would die if they failed, even more unbelievable however was their claim that they came from another Dimension, some alternate reality where their world was part of a movies series. Nobody wanted to believe it true, but George's ranting about the lore and knowledge of stuff that didn't even occur yet caused them to be shocked beyond doubt.

In the original, every merc was supposed to die one after another and only Alice would survive mostly unharmed, while Matt would get infected and be turned into Nemesis. Hearing that your life was writen as a script in a movie didn't go well with everyone, the others did their best to keep Kaplan from turning George's face into meat paste.

"You motherfucker! you're all only alive, because I was stupid enough to change the script, do you know how many people would have died due to the laser and later the zombies! Do you have any idea how much trouble it caused to my group, because I said a single word about the lasers! You ungrateful sack of Shit! You would have died by the Licker! Becoming nothing more than Dog shit!"

George shouted as he was also held back facing an enraged Kaplan, whom hopefully hadn't used a gun, otherwise George wouldn't even be alive to talk shit.

"Boys Calm down, you should all thank me, because without me you would all be zombie food"

The Red Queen stated in a childish voice, that sounded both cute and creepy. It seems as if she was learning from a really bad figure, she was taking more from George's character whom begun to flaunt at her words as if he was her father or something and the A.I seemed to enjoy it. Everyone else viewed this as creepy, but they didn't wish to anger the A.I. and be thrown out of their safe haven.

Time passed and everyone was on their toes, the NPCs and Players had become more and more divided as they had nothing in common with one another, it wasn't a relation of hate or anything, it was just the NPCs waiting until the players were forced to act, hoping to use them at least as a distraction as they slipped out of the facility. In a way both sides wished to use one another, for their own goal. The NPCs had more than enough guns, but no hands to use them, while the Players had no reason to help them at the moment, but would have soon enough, if Nick's words were right and their next objective was to get out of the Hive, both goals would have been accomplished.

"I want to play that game again"

Red Queen pouted towards George, whom asked Nick once more for the deck of cards, it was a weird sight of a holographic projection, playing cards with real people. The NPCs having nothing better to do joined as well, at least some of them did, since most of the players were sick and tired of the Red Queen always winning, it was impossible to play better than a machine of her computing abilities and George would just help hold her cards for her.

It was a simple game of old Maid, nothing outrageous, but nobody could beat the queen, some even suspected she was cheating. George however assured them that she didn't, saying that is was her computing power that helped her make the right decisions.

After the game Kaplan whom was hacking into the system even now, trying to find a way out assured them that she was indeed cheating, she could see all the cards and although she did her best not to look at the data it still passed her calculatory filters, thus she indeed saw their cards and was just toying with them, or rather trying her best to modify the system so that she could play more fairly, for her these people were but beta testers for a broken game for machines to play. In a way Kaplan found it fascinating that she was a learning, self improving machine, but other than that there was no use to her, she was just a piece of technology, you could call it a prototype for something greater and better.

Of course Keplan only said "She's cheating" no further words when asked, birthing disatisfaction from the A.I. but also checking a bit how her inner workings worked at the time, since he had nothing better to do, he could at least see how the A.I. worked.