pectoral. She smiled guiltily at him, shaking her head. “You’re okay. Nothing’s broken.”
She turned back to David, the smile falling away. “Yeah. If there’d been a release, that guy on the door, Ammon, would’ve been affected. But the Trisquads—if they’re the result of experiments with the T-Virus, they’d have rotted away by now. It’s been over three weeks since he wrote that note, we should be looking at piles of mush. Either it’s a different virus—or someone’s been taking care of them. Enzyme upkeep, maybe some kind of refrigeration....”
David nodded slowly, following her reasoning. “And if that ‘someone’ had gone mad and killed everyone, why bother?”
“That corpse, waving at us,” Karen said thought-fully. “And the creature or creatures in the cove. It’s like he expected people to come—“ “—but didn’t mean for us to get very far,” John finished.
The line from the note ran through David’s mind, the words following the plea to stop “him.” ‘God knows what he means to do. ’...
Steve had slipped his shirt back on, shivering from the damp cloth. “So what do we do now?” David didn’t answer him, not sure what to say. He felt so drained, so exhausted and uncertain.... “I—our options are to get out or go deeper,” he said softly. “Considering what’s happened so far, I don’t feel comfortable making that call. What do you want to do?”
David looked warily from face to face, expecting to see anger and disdain; he’d let them down, led them into a perilous situation without a contingency plan—all because he couldn’t stand to see the S.T.A.R.S. tarnished. And now that they were trapped, he didn’t know what to do.
The expressions they wore, as a group, were thought-ful and intent. He was surprised to see Karen actually smile, and when she spoke, her tone was brightly eager.
“Since you’re asking, I want to figure this out. I want to know what happened here.”
Rebecca was nodding. “Yeah, me, too. And I still want to get a look at the T-Virus”
“I wanna pick off a few more of those Tri-boys,” John said, grinning. “Man, zombies with M-16s—night of the living death squad.”
Steve sighed, pushing his wet bangs off his fore-head. “Might as well keep looking; going back out isn’t exactly safe. It’s not the way I would’ve liked, but getting dirt on Umbrella was the original plan . . . yeah, I want to nail these bastards.”
David smiled, feeling properly embarrassed at him-self. He hadn’t just underestimated the situation, he’d sorely underestimated his team.
“What do you want?” Rebecca asked suddenly.
“Really?”
The question surprised him anew—not because she’d asked, but because suddenly, he didn’t have an answer. He thought about the S.T.A.R.S., about his obsession with his career and what it had already cost them. All he’d wanted for days was to feel as though his life’s work had been meaningful, that it hadn’t been wasted—and he’d convinced himself that un-covering the treachery within the job would lay his mind at rest, as if rooting out the corruption would somehow prove that he wasn’t worthless. I’ve worshipped at the altar of the organization for so long. .. but isn’t this the reason why, the real purpose? Here, in this room, on these faces?
He studied her curious, sharp gaze, felt the rest of them watching him, waiting.
“I want for us to survive,” he said finally, truth-fully. “I want for us to make it out of here.” “Amen to that,” John muttered.
David remembered what he’d told the Raccoon team, about each of them doing what they did best if they meant to succeed against Umbrella. He’d said it to get Chris’s approval of his operation, but it was a truth that applied to all of them.
Get to it, Captain....
“John, you and Karen take a look around the building, check the doors, be back in ten. Steve, boot up one of those computers, see if you can find a detailed layout of the grounds. Rebecca, we’ll go through the desks. We want maps, data on Trisquads, T-Virus, anything personal about the researchers that might tell us who’s behind all this.”
David nodded at them, realizing that he felt clearer and more balanced than he had in a long, long time. “Let’s do it,” he said. To hell with the S.T.A.R.S.
They were going to take Umbrella down.
Dr. Griffith might not have even noticed the securi-ty breach if it hadn’t been for the Ma7s; it seemed that they were useful after all, though not in the way they’d been intended.
He’d spent most of the day in the lab, dreamily pondering the pressurized canisters standing by the entrance, the shining steel glittering seductively in the soft light. Once he’d made the decision to let the virus go, he’d realized that there was really nothing else he needed to do. The hours had flown by; each glance at the clock had been a surprise, though not an unpleas-ant one. He’d be the first, after all, the first convert to the new way of the world. With that in front of him, the only task with which he needed to concern himself was getting the canisters up to the lighthouse—and with the doctors waiting silently, patiently by, even that was taken care of. Just before dawn, he’d give them their final instructions—and then proudly lead the human species into the light, into the miracle of peace.
It had been the thought of the Ma7s that had finally drawn him out into the caves, the only concern he hadn’t already dismissed as trivial. He’d already made a mistake with the Leviathans; once he’d taken over the facility, he’d lowered the cove gates on impulse, wanting them to be as free as he’d felt. It wasn’t until the next day that he’d realized Umbrella might find out and come looking, effectively putting an end to his plans. He’d continued to send in weekly reports to keep up appearances, but there was no good explanation for the “escape” of the four creatures. It had been sheer luck that the Leviathans had returned on their own.
The Ma7s were a different matter entirely, of course. They were too violent, too unpredictable to be let out. But letting them starve to death in their cage didn’t seem right, particularly not when they, too, would enjoy the effects of his gift; it wasn’t their choice to exist as creatures of destruction, even to exist at all. And since he’d played a small role in their creation, he felt a responsibility to do something for them....
He’d stood in front of the outer gate for quite some time, considering the problem as all five of the
ani-mals hurled themselves repeatedly at the heavy steel mesh, their strange, mournful howls echoing through the damp and winding caves. There was a manual lock release near the enclosure, another in the lab—but there was no way to loose them from the light-house, and he certainly couldn’t let them out before he got to safety. He could send one of the doctors to do it, but the 7s had a much slower metabolism than a human’s, and there was a risk that they would get to him before they made the change. A month before his takeover of the compound, Dr. Chin and two of her vet techs had made the mistake of trying to tend to one of the sick ones; it was a bad way to die, and although he’d be oblivious to the pain once he’d made the transition, he meant to stay with the new world for as long as possible.
Griffith had finally decided that euthanasia was the only reasonable choice. It was a reluctant decision, but he could see no alternative. Although the lab was well stocked, poisons weren’t his forte, so he’d de-cided to look up the information on the mainframe—and there, in the cold comfort of the sealed laborato-ry, he’d discovered that his sanctuary had been in-vaded.
He sat in front of the computer in a kind of shock, staring at the blinking cursor that indicated system use in one of the bunkers. There was no chance that it was a mistake. Except for the lab terminals, the rest of the compound had been powered down weeks ago. Umbrella had come.