“Barry’s here, too—Enrico, what happened?
What’s this about?”
As Barry stepped out from behind the corner, Enrico stared at them both for a long moment, his gaze darting back and forth nervously—and then he sagged, lowering his gun as he fell back against the stones. Barry and Jill hurried over, crouching down next to the wounded Bravo.
“I’m sorry,” he said weakly. “I had to make sure. ...”
It was as though defending himself had taken his last bit of strength. Jill took his hand gently, alarmed at how pale he was. Blood oozed from his thigh, his pants soaked with it.
“This whole thing was a set-up,” he breathed, turning his watering gaze toward her. “I got lost, I climbed the fence, saw the tunnels . . . found the paper . . . Umbrella knew, all along. ...” Barry looked stricken,
his face almost as white as Enrico’s. “Hang on, Rico. We’ll get you out of here, you just have lie still—“ Enrico shook his head, still looking at Jill. “There’s a traitor in the S.T.A.R.S.,” he whispered. “He told me—“ Bam! Bam!
Enrico’s body jumped as two holes suddenly ap-peared in his chest, blood pulsing out of them in violent spurts. Through the resounding echo of the shots, running footsteps clattered away down the corridor behind them.
Barry launched to his feet and sprinted around the corner as Jill helplessly squeezed Enrico’s twitching hand, her heart pounding and sick. He slumped over, dead before he touched the cold stone floor. Her mind flooded with questions as Barry’s pursu-ing footsteps faded away, silence settling once again over the deep shadows. What paper had the Bravo found? When Enrico had said “traitor” she’d imme-diately thought of Barry, acting so strangely—but he’d been right beside her when the shots had been fired.
So who did this? Who was Trent talking about? Who did Enrico see?
Feeling lost and alone, Jill held his cooling hand and waited for Barry to come back.
Rebecca was going through an old trunk pushed against one wall of the room they’d entered, shuffling through stacks of papers and frowning while Chris checked out the rest of the room. A single, rumpled cot, a desk, and a towering, ancient bookshelf were the only other pieces of furniture. After the cold, alien splendor of the mansion, Chris was absurdly grateful to be in simpler surroundings.
They’d come to a house at the end of the long, winding path from the courtyard, much smaller and infinitely less intimidating than the mansion. The hall they’d stepped into was plain, undecorated wood, as were the two small bedrooms they’d discovered just off the silent corridor. Chris figured they’d found a bunkhouse for some of the mansion’s employees. He had noticed the thick, unmarked dust in the hallway on their way in with a sinking resignation, realizing that none of the other S.T.A.R.S. had made it out of the main house. With no way for him and Rebecca to get back, all they could do was try to find the back door and go for help. Chris didn’t like it, but there weren’t any other options.
After a brief perusal of the shelves, Chris walked to the battered wooden desk and pulled at the top drawer; it was locked. He bent down and felt along the bottom of the drawer, grinning as his fingers touched a thick piece of tape.
Don’t people ever watch movies? The key’s always stuck under the drawer. . . .
He peeled the tape away and came up with a tiny silver key. Still grinning, he unlocked the drawer and pulled it open.
There was a deck of playing cards, a few pens and pencils, gum wrappers, a crumpled pack of ciga-rettes—junk, mostly, the kind of stuff that always seemed to accumulate in desk drawers. . . .
Bingo!
Chris picked up the key ring by its leather tag, pleased with himself. If finding the exit was this easy, they’d be on their way back to Raccoon in no time. “Looks like we just got a break,” he said softly, holding up the keys. The leather tag had the word “Alias” burned into one side, the number “345” written on the back in smudged ball-point pen. Chris didn’t know the significance of the number, but he remembered the nickname from the diary he’d found in the mansion.
Thank you, Mr. Alias. Assuming the keys were for the bunkhouse, they were that much closer to getting
Rebecca was still sitting by the trunk, surrounded by papers, envelopes, even a few grainy photos that she’d pulled out. She seemed totally absorbed in whatever she was reading, and when Chris walked over to join her, she looked up at him with eyes clouded by worry.
“You find something?”
Rebecca held up the piece of paper she was reading. “A couple of things. Listen to this: ‘Four days since the accident and the plant at Point 42 is still growing and mutating at an incredible rate. . . .’” She skipped ahead, skimming the page with one finger as she spoke. “It calls this thing Plant 42, and says its root is in the basement. . . here. ‘Shortly after the accident, one of the infected members of the research team became violent and broke the water tank in the basement, flooding the entire section. We think some trace chemicals used in the T-virus tests contaminated the water and contributed to Plant 42’s radical mutations. A number of shoots have already been traced to different parts of the building, but the main plant now hangs from the ceiling in the large conference room on the first floor. . . . “ ‘We’ve determined that Plant 42 has become sensitive to movement and is now carnivorous. In close proximity to humans, it uses tentacular, prehen-sile vines to entrap its prey while leechlike adap-tations latch onto exposed skin and draw fatal quantities of blood; several members of the staff have already fallen victim to this.’ It’s dated May twenty-first, signed Henry Sarton”
Chris shook his head, wondering again how some-one could invent a virus like the one they had come across. It seemed to infect everything it touched with madness, transforming its carrier into a deadly carni-vore, hungry for blood.
God, now a man-eating plant. . .
Chris shuddered, suddenly twice as glad that they’d be leaving soon.
“So it infects plants, too,” he said. “When we report this, we’ll have to—“ “No, that’s not it,” she said. She handed him a photo, her expression grim.
It was a blurry snapshot of a middle-aged man wearing a lab coat. He was standing stiffly in front of a plain wooden door, and Chris realized that it was the very door they’d come through not ten minutes ago—the front entrance to the bunkhouse.
He flipped the picture over, squinting at the tiny script on the back. “H. Sarton, January ‘98, Point 42.”
He stared at Rebecca, finally understanding her fearful gaze. They were standing in Point 42. The carnivorous plant was here.
Wesker stood in the darkness of the unlit tunnel, his irritation growing as he listened to Barry stumble through the echoing corridors. Jill wouldn’t wait forever, and the raging Mr. Burton couldn’t seem to grasp that Enrico’s killer had simply slid into the shadows just around the corner, the most obvious place there was.
Come on, come on . . .
Since they’d left the house, he’d finally started to feel like things were going in his favor. He’d remem-bered the underground room near the entrance to the labs, and was almost certain that the wolf medal would be there. And the tunnels were clear. He had expected the 121s to be out, but apparently
no one had messed with the passage mechanisms since the accident. They’d split up to search for the lever that worked the passages—and it had been in plain sight, propped up next to the very mechanism that it controlled.
Everything would have been perfect—except god-damned Enrico Marini had wandered along, happen-ing across a very important paper that Wesker had accidentally dropped—his orders, straight from the head of White Umbrella. And then to complicate matters, Jill had blundered into the tunnels before Wesker could finish taking care of the problem. Wesker sighed inwardly. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. In truth, this whole aifair had been a massive headache from the beginning. At least the underground security hadn’t been activated—though he’d had no way of knowing that until they’d reached the tunnels, and having dragged Barry along as insur-ance, he now had to deal with the consequences. If the money wasn’t so good—