…blood on my hands, on the scalpel that glittered wet and sharp and plunged into soft, yielding flesh of faces and bellies and eyes and later, the thundering crash of waves in the dark and the spool of fishing line and Amman, Amman, waving…
His eyes snapped open and the nightmare was over. Shaken, Griffith looked around at the cool, soft light of the laboratory. He must have dozed off for a moment, must have. Yes, that was it. He'd fallen asleep and had a terrible dream. He looked at the clock, saw that only a few mo– ments had passed since he'd sent the two doctors out. He felt a rush of relief, realizing that he hadn't been asleep for very long, but as the relief ebbed, he felt the nervousness slip back into his body, jittering and pulsing anxiety about the intruders that had come to his facility.
They won't stop me. It's mine.
Griffith stood up and started to pace restlessly, back and forth, waiting.
The "time rainbow" test, number seven, took only a moment longer to complete than test number four, what David had started to think of as the "chess test."
John and Karen had shown him to the small table in the big room, standing behind him as he'd uprighted the colored tiles and laid them out. Beneath the heap of nine rainbow-shaded pieces was an elongated in-dentation, perhaps a foot long and two inches across; it was clear that just seven of the tiles would fit.
Seven colors in the rainbow, seven tiles. Simple. So why are there nine of them?
David ordered the pieces by their colors, placing them in a row beneath the indentation. Each bore a different letter on the top, inked in black. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and three violet tiles with three different letters. "Is it supposed to spell something?" John asked. Going from left to right, the first six tiles read, J F M A M J. "Not in English," Karen said mildly. The three violet pieces were J, M and P. David sighed. "It's one of those where you have to figure out the next in the series," he said. "Apparently relating to time. Any thoughts?"
John and Karen both stared down at the puzzle, studying the letters; he wondered if they were as tired as he was starting to feel. John seemed distinctly less chipper than usual, and Karen looked fairly wiped out, her skin pale and gaze somewhat distant.
Of course they're tired, but at least they're making an attempt…
David looked back at the colored pieces and tried to focus, but couldn't seem to manage a single coherent idea. It had been an awfully long day, periods of intense concentration interspersed with violent rushes of adrenaline. He'd run through fear, self-doubt, deter– mination and then fear again, plus a handful of less clear-cut emotions. Now he just felt frazzled, waiting to see what would come next… John grinned suddenly, a triumphant light in his eyes. "The letters stand for the months – January, February, March, April, May, June – July. It's J, the last letter is J." "Brilliant," David said. He started to place the tiles in the indentation as John nudged Karen with his elbow, still grinning. "And you thought all I was good for was easy sex."
As usual, Karen didn't bother answering. Relieved to be through the second test, David pushed the last piece into place. There was a faint click and the rainbow lowered very slightly, perhaps a millimeter. From above them, a gentle chime sounded from a speaker, this one hidden by a fluorescent bar. "That all I get?" John quipped. "No parade?"
David stood up, smiling tiredly. "I felt the same way with the other one. We should get moving, see how Steve and Rebecca are making out." "Interesting way of putting it, David," John said, chuckling. "Nice one." It took David a moment to get it, though Karen rolled her eyes almost immediately, then scratched at them. When she took her hand away, David saw that her right eye was extremely bloodshot. The left was also slightly discolored, though not as badly. She noticed his scrutiny and smiled at him, shrug– ging. "I irritated it somehow. It itches, but it's fine." "Don't rub it, you'll make it worse," David said, leading them toward the door. "And have Rebecca take a look when we get across."
They walked back into a connecting corridor and started for the back exit, David steeling himself for another dash across the compound. By his count, they'd managed to take down three of the Trisquads in full; three men outside of the boathouse and a fourth on the run to the first building, then John and Karen's five between blocks C and D.
Useful information, if you happen to know how many of the squads there were to begin with.
He ignored the inner sarcasm as they reached the metal door, Karen leaning back to turn off the over– head light. They pulled out weapons and took deep breaths, preparing and David felt a familiar sensa– tion wash over him, one that he'd experienced before in tight situations but had never been able to name. It wasn't a feeling so much as a state of existence and although not a religious man, it was the closest thing he'd found to a belief in fate, a sense that there were patterns at play beyond the realm of human influence. Whatever was going to happen, whatever was al-ready happening even as they readied themselves to step back outside – all of the deciding factors were now firmly in place, interlocking like pieces of a puzzle. He felt it with a certainty that denied reason. It was as though a great wheel of chance that deter-mined outcome, that would show them life or death, success or failure, had been set into motion and was now spinning toward its inevitable conclusion – only instead of slowing down, the wheel would turn stead-ily faster, speeding up as it revealed to them what the cosmos had planned. In the past, he'd often found comfort in the sudden awareness of that spinning wheel, the undefinable sense that the outcome had been decided and all anyone could do was watch it unfold. When he'd been a child and his father had been on one of his drunken, abusive rampages, the belief in a bigger picture had sometimes been the only thing that saved him from total despair. This time, though… this time, it felt like a terrible thing, a dark and whirling carnival ride that they had boarded by mistake, not realizing the truth until it was too late, that they couldn't go back, and there was no avoiding whatever lay ahead.
We hang on, then. We do what we can.
David stepped to the door, flicking the Beretta's safety off. Whether or not they had any control over what was to come, Rebecca and Steve were waiting.
The test room was quiet except for the soft hum from the machines marked with blue numbers, nine through twelve, and the occasional rustle of a turning page as Rebecca went through Athens's journal. Steve sat on the edge of a table and watched her read, his thoughts restless and uneasy as they waited for the others to show up. His chest ached mildly, both from the small caliber round he'd taken earlier and the anxious build of worry for John and Karen. After a quick look at the other rooms in the building, they'd both agreed that the test room was the place to wait. It seemed that block B of the Umbrella facility was mostly devoted to surgical aspects of the bio-weapons research, the rooms all white and steel, ominously stark and unpleasant. Although the building was as stuffy and warm as the others they'd been in, Steve had felt a physical chill as they'd passed the empty operating rooms – as if the chambers themselves had taken on the characteristics of the T-Virus creatures. Cold and lifeless and some– how mindlessly black with purpose… Rebecca looked up, her eyes flashing with excite– ment. "Listen to this: '"They're still waiting for our feedback on expansion ever since Griffith revved up the amp time. 'We've got the space for up to twenty units, but I'm going to hold strong on a max of twelve; we wouldn't be able to concentrate on training more than four squads at a time. Ammon said he'll back me up if there's any hassle.'"