First things first, board her and check fuel, general condition, learn the controls…
He stopped at the edge of the platform and looked down, frowning. He was at least ten feet above the front hatch, which looked to be locked down tight. There was a bank of machinery to his left, a few pan– els lit up. Steve walked over and looked at them, smiling when he saw a control to power up the boarding lift. The system should also open the plane door, according to the tiny diagram. "Presto," he said, flipping the switch. A loud and grat-ing mechanical noise bellowed through the giant hangar, making him wince, but it stopped after a few seconds, as a two-man lift slid to a halt at the platform's edge. He stepped onto the lift, studied the standing control panel – and started to curse, every bad word he could think of, twice. Next to a trio of hexagonally shaped spaces were the words, "insert proof keys here." No keys, no power.
They could be anywhere on the whole goddamn is-land! And what are the chances that all goddamn three of them will be goddamn together?
He took a deep breath, made himself calm down a lit– tle, and spent the next few minutes figuring out how the plane's controls were hooked up to the rest of the sys– tem, looking for a way to bypass the keys. And after a careful, thoughtful deliberation, he started cursing again. When he finally got tired of that, he resigned himself to the inevitable. Steve turned around and started to search the area, peering into every dark crevice, formulating theories about where the proof keys might be as he ran his hands over the greasy, dust-slimed machinery cabinets – and he decided that he was definitely going to dance all over the bones of the next Umbrella employee he gunned down, just for working at such an unnecessarily compli– cated place. Keys and emblems and proofs and sub– marines; it was a wonder they ever got shit done.
The virus carrier was wearing a lab coat and its lower jaw had fallen off somewhere, or been broken off; it gur– gled and spluttered horribly, its wormy tongue flopping limply across its neck. Claire couldn't tell if it had been a man or woman, although she supposed it didn't really matter. As pitiful as it was revolting, she put it out of its misery with a single shot to the temple and then searched the area – working laboratory office, small in– ventory room – before stepping back into the hall, dis– couraged at her overwhelming lack of success. The entrance she'd walked back to from the mansion had opened up into a reasonably big courtyard, hard packed dirt and totally utilitarian – more like the prison than the palace, although even after searching a few rooms, she still couldn't figure out where she was, ex– actly; some kind of testing facility, maybe, or a training ground for guards or soldiers. Maybe just a building designed to destroy hope, she thought blackly, looking toward the front door. She'd walked in maybe ten minutes ago, hoping that Rodrigo wasn't already dead, that Steve had found a boat, that Mr. Psycho Ashford and his sister weren't planning to blow up the island – and in just ten minutes, those hopes had been thoroughly stomped on. All she really wanted now was a goddamn bottle of medicine, because then she'd be one step closer to leaving. She'd tried the upstairs first, undergoing an exciting lit– tle adventure that had shaved a few years off her age. All she'd found up there was a small, locked lab with a lot of broken glass on the floor, from what appeared to be rup– tured holding tanks. She'd seen the damage through an observation window, and had been about to leave when some poor, bloody guy in an environmental suit threw himself at the glass. It had been his dying act; the suit ob– viously hadn't done him much good, his head had practi– cally exploded, coating the inside of his helmet with gore. It hadn't done her heart much good, either, scaring her half to death, and the whole upstairs experience had been topped off by an emergency shutter lockdown, apparently triggered by the suit guy. She'd practically had to hurl herself down the stairs to avoid being trapped.
Whee.
Nine zombies she'd had to put down so far, three of them in lab coats or scrubs, and not even a cotton swab to show for it. Nothing in the locker room – and she'd looked through practically every damned one of the lockers, turning up jockstraps and porn, but little else, nothing in the odd little shower room, zip and zilch. She'd have thought that a pharmaceutical company might actually have a few Pharmaceuticals lying around, but it was looking more doubtful by the mo– ment. Claire walked back to the long hall that branched off from the building's first floor, that opened into an out– door courtyard. She'd hoped to find something for Rod– rigo without having to leave the building proper, but there was no help for it.