Caliban Cove

The rest of the pages were blank. Rebecca looked up at Steve, not sure what to say, her mind working to glean the relevant bits of information from the ram-bling tirade. There was something in there that both-ered her, something that she couldn’t quite place. Missing chemicals. Infection process. The brilliant, creepy Dr. Griffith. . . .

She no longer had any doubt that Griffith had killed the others, but that wasn’t what sent her internal alarms jangling. It was—

“Block D,” Steve said, a look of anxious fear playing across his face. “If we’re in A, Karen and John are in D”

Where there’s enough of the T-Virus to infect the entire compound. Where the infection process took place. “We should tell David,” Rebecca said, and Steve nodded, both of them moving quickly for the door, Rebecca hoping desperately that John and Karen wouldn’t find room 101—and that if they did, they wouldn’t touch anything that could hurt them. The test room was big, three of the walls lined with open-ended cubicles. Once he’d turned on the lights, he saw that the tests were clearly numbered and color-coded, the symbols painted on the cement floor in front of each one.

All of the red series was on his left, closest to the door. He saw brightly colored blocks and simple shapes on the tables in each cubicle as he walked past, heading for the back of the room. The green series lined the wall opposite, though he ignored it entirely. The back wall was marked with blue triangles, the number four test in the far right corner. As he neared the back of the room, he heard a faint hum of power coming from the blue test area. There was a small computer on the table in number two, a keyboard and headset in three. As promised, the series was activated—though what they were con-nected to, he couldn’t imagine.

Can’t imagine and don’t care. Once we solve these little puzzles, we’ll find whatever’s been hidden for us and get out, away from this cemetery. It can’t happen soon enough.

David had seen all he wanted to see of Caliban Cove. The corpses in the front hall had been bad, but it was the thoughts that they’d inspired that troubled him, made him so suddenly eager to get his team out. The Trisquads were dangerous and deadly, the mon-ster in the cove’s waters had been horrible—but somewhere in the facility lurked a monster of a different kind entirely, one that had murdered his own people and then stacked them like kindling in a dark place. That kind of insanity chilled him far worse than the immoral greed of Umbrella, and he was afraid of what such a man might do to the handful of soldiers trying to stop him. We’ll find the “material, “probably notes on Umbrel-la, perhaps on the virus itself—and then break for the fence, get well away from this madness. Let the Feds handle the rest. If they’re smart, they’ll blow up the entire compound and gather the information from the ashes....

He stopped in front of the last cubicle, returning his attention to the task at hand. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see, but the set up of test number four surprised him nonetheless. A table and chair, utilitarian gray metal. On the table was a pad of paper, a pencil, and an inexpensive chess set, all of the pieces in place. As he stepped into the cubicle, he saw that there was a metal plaque set into the surface of the table, a string of numbers etched into the steel. David sat in the chair, peering down at the num-bers.

9-22-3//14-26-9-16-8//7-19-22//8-11-12-7 He frowned, looking up at the chess set and then back at the numbers. There was nothing else to look at; that was it. He quickly sorted through the clues of Ammon’s message, wondering which was supposed to be the answer. Was it, “the letters and numbers reverse,” or “don’t count”? Since there didn’t seem to be anything relating to time or a rainbow, it had to be one of the two....

If the lines are in the same order as the tests, this is the letter and number reversal. But what letters, there aren’t any—

David smiled suddenly, shaking his head. The numbers on the plaque didn’t go any higher than 26; it was a code, and a fairly simple one. He picked up the pencil and quickly jotted down the letters of the alphabet, then numbered them backward; A was 26, B, 25, all the way back to Zed, 1. Glancing back and forth between the plaque and the paper, he wrote down the numbers and then started to decipher the message.

R . ..£... X. .. M. . .

The final letter was a T, and he stared down at the sentence, then at the chess board. It seemed that somebody had a sense of humor.

REX MARKS THE SPOT.

“Rex” was Latin for “king.”

White always goes first, so . . .

He reached out and touched the white king. As soon as his finger contacted the piece, it swiveled in place, turning around to face the back of the board. At the same time, there was a soft, musical tone from overhead. He looked up and saw a tiny speaker set into the ceiling.

Nothing else happened, no flashing lights or secret passageways opening up behind the wall. Apparently, he’d passed.

How anti-climactic.

It seemed like an awfully complicated test for some-thing as supposedly mindless as a Trisquad zombie—though perhaps the researchers had been making plans for something else, something intelligent.. . . It was an unsettling thought, and not one he wanted to ponder. He stood up and turned toward the front of the room—

• just as the door burst open, Rebecca and Steve hurrying in, wearing matching expressions of fear. “What is it?”

Rebecca held up a book, talking fast. “We found a journal. It says that the strain of the virus used to infect the Trisquads is in block D, in room 101. Maybe everything’s fine, but if John and Karen touch anything that’s been contaminated—“ He’d heard enough. “Let’s go.”

They turned and he strode past them, leading them back the way they’d come, his thoughts racing. They had passed an exit on the far side of the building, he could send Steve and Rebecca to the next block over while he went to D, just as originally planned—only much faster, and now carrying the horrible, heavy fear that two of his people might accidentally uncover the T-Virus.

It won’t happen, they’ll be careful, the chances of one of them getting a cut and then touching something dangerous in a room that’s bound to be marked as some kind of a laboratory...

The reassuring facts did nothing to ease his mind. They hurried toward the exit, a deepening knot of dread settling into the pit of David’s stomach. They stood in the bright corridor at the center of D block, silently listening for a sound that would tell them David had come. From their position, they should be able to hear any one of the three external doors being used. After securing the building and finding the test room, she and John had chocked open all of the passages that led to the block’s exits. Karen checked her watch and then rubbed her eyes, feeling a bit worn out from all of the night’s events, and still sickened by what they’d found in room 101. Even John seemed unusually subdued, and definitely quieter than normal. He hadn’t cracked a single joke since they’d walked back to begin their wait. Maybe he’s thinking about the gurneys, fixed with bloody restraints. Or the syringes. Or the surgical equipment heaped in the sink....

They’d found the test room first, a large chamber filled with little tables, each marked with numbers between five and eight; Karen had been somewhat disappointed to see that the blue series number seven was just a handful of colored tiles with letters on them, half of them upside down and unreadable. All the colors corresponded to a rainbow’s, though there were two extra violet tiles in the heaped pile. Since they couldn’t risk messing with it until David had completed the first test, she’d reluctantly turned away, suggesting that they check out the rest of the block. They’d gone through a couple of offices, empty, and a cluttered coffee room, where they’d found a box of incredibly moldy donuts and little else. It had been the chemical lab that had told them the most about what kind of place Umbrella had created—and although Karen didn’t believe in ghosts, the room had given her a feeling like nothing she’d ever experienced before; it was haunted, plain and simple, haunted by the misery of fear and the cold, nazi-esque precision of scientists committing atrocities against their fellow man—

“You thinking about that room?” John asked softly. Karen nodded, but didn’t say anything. John seemed to sense her unspoken desire not to talk about it, for which she was thankful. The weight of her good luck charm was the only other comfort she felt at the moment, and she longed to take it out, to feel reassured by memories of her father and successful missions gone by. Anything to take her mind off the lab room.... The outer door to 101 was clearly marked with a biohazard symbol and they’d briefly

discussed not going in at all, John arguing against entering a possibly contaminated environment. Karen had pointed out that neither of them had any cuts or abrasions, and that they might find something about the T-Virus to take with them. The truth was, she couldn’t stand to let such an opportunity pass; she wanted to see what was behind the closed door, because it was there. Because leaving it unopened would get under her skin.

John had finally agreed and they’d gone in, stepping into a small entryway that was draped with sheets of heavy plastic. There were shower nozzles overhead and a drain set into the floor; a decon area. A smaller second door had opened up into the room itself, leading them into a mad scientist’s dream. Glass, crunching underfoot. A tired smell of anxious sweat beneath the acrid odor of bleach. ... John found the lights and even before the large room snapped into view, Karen felt her heart start to pound. There was a dark tension that filled the air, a sense of foreboding that radiated from the very walls. It looked like a dozen other lab facilities she’d worked in; counters and shelves, a couple of metal sinks, a large, stainless steel refrigeration unit in one corner with a lock on the handle. And somehow, that was the worst—that the environment was so familiar, a place she’d always felt at home.

The few differences were dramatic ones. The room was dominated by a stainless autopsy table, fitted with velcro restraints—and there were two additional hos-pital gurneys next to it, likewise fitted. As she walked over to look at one of them, she saw the dark, dried stains at either end; the thin pad was soaked with blood from where a man’s ankles and wrists would be. In the back of the room was a cage the size of a large walk-in closet, heavy bars surrounding an unpadded bench. Next to the cage, several slender poles leaned against the wall, each a meter or so in length—and tipped with hypodermic needles. They were the kinds of instruments used to drug wild animals, allowing the person operating them not to get within reach. Karen looked down at the gurney, lightly touching the long-dried stain, wondering what kind of person could have willingly participated in such an experi-ment. The crust of blood was old, powdery, and filled her with thoughts of what the victims must have endured, waiting in the cage, perhaps watching as some gloved madman injected a toxic, mutating virus into a helpless human being....

It was a bad place, a place of evil deeds. They’d both felt it, both been affected by the realization of what had gone on there—

Karen’s right eye itched, distracting her from the terrible remembrance, drawing her back to the pres-ent. She rubbed at it, then looked at her watch again. It had been only twenty minutes since the team had split, though it felt longer—

There was a sound of a door opening, followed by David’s excited shout through the corridor. He’d come in through the west entrance.

“Karen, John!”

John grinned at her, and she felt a wave of relief;

David was okay.

“Here! Keep walking!” John called back. “Take a right at the tee!”

His footsteps pounded through the hall. In a few seconds, he appeared at the comer and jogged toward them, his face tight with concern.

“Is everything—“ Karen started to ask, but David cut her off.

“Did you find the laboratory room? Room 101?” John frowned, his smile fading. “Yeah, it’s back the way you came—“ “Did either of you touch anything? Do you have any cuts, any small wounds that might have come in contact with anything?”

Their confusion must have shown. David spoke quickly, looking back and forth between them. “We found a journal, naming it as the room where they were infecting the Trisquads.”

John smiled again. “Well, no shit. We figured that much out in about two seconds.”

Karen held out her hands, turning them over for David to see. “Not a scratch.”

David exhaled sharply, his shoulders sagging. “Oh, thank God. I had the worst feeling all the way over that something had happened. We found the researchers in block A; Ammon was right, he killed them—and our ‘he’ has a name now. Rebecca seems certain that it’s Nicolas Griffith. He was the one she recognized from Trent’s list, and he has a rather sordid history, she can fill you in when we regroup. .

. ” He shook his head, a wavering smile on his lips. “I just—I suppose I let my imagination run wild for a moment.”

John smiled wider. “Jeez, David, I had no idea you cared. Or that you thought we’d be stupid enough to stick ourselves with dirty needles in a place like this.”

David laughed, a soft, shaky sound. “Please accept my sincerest apologies.”

“Where are Steve and Rebecca?” Karen asked. “Probably in the next test area by now. I saw them safely off to block B before I came here ... did you find test seven?”

“This way,” John said, and as they started down the hall, he began to recount their run-in with the Tri-squads.

Karen followed, rubbing at the maddening, elusive itch in her right eye. She must have irritated it with all of the rubbing, it seemed to be getting worse. And to top things off, she felt a headache coming on. She wiped at her eye, sighing inwardly at the timing. She never got headaches unless she was coming down with something. The swim in the ocean must have set her up nicely for a cold—and from the building throb in her head, it was going to be a nasty one.

ELEVEH

AFTER HE’D INSTRUCTED ATHENS AND SENT him on his way, he’d prepared the syringes and decided on a place to hide. There was nothing left for him to do but wait. In spite of his earlier feelings of confidence, he was nervous now, pacing through the lab restlessly. What if Athens had forgotten how to load a rifle? What if the enclosure release didn’t work, or the intruders had the firepower to stop the Ma7s? He’d tried to prepare for every possibility, each plan unfolding into a backup—but what if everything failed, if all of them fell through?

/’// kill them myself, I’ll strangle them with my bare hands! They will not stop me from doing what must be done. They can’t—not after all I’ve accomplished, not after everything I’ve been through to get to where I am. . . .

For the second time that day, he flashed back to the takeover of the compound ... the strange, vivid im-ages of that bright and sunny day less than a month ago. Instead of blocking the thoughts as he’d done before, he let them come, inviting them in—to re-mind him of what he was capable of doing when the

need arose. He abruptly stopped pacing and moved to a chair, collapsing into it and closing his eyes. A bright and sunny day...

Once he’d realized what had to be done, he’d planned it for over two weeks, working over each detail tirelessly until he’d been satisfied that every variable had been addressed. He’d spent time reading about the Trisquads and going through the master logs, memorizing the routine of the facility. He’d watched the habits of his colleagues, learned their schedules until he could have recited them backward. He’d stared for hours at the sketches he’d made of each building, walking through them in his mind a thousand times. After careful consideration, he chose a date—and several days before, he’d slipped into the Trisquad processing room and stolen several small vials of extremely powerful medication. Kylosynthesine, Mamesidine, Tralphenide—animal tranquilizers and a synthesized narcotic, some of Um-brella’s finest work....

It had only taken him an afternoon to get the mix the way he’d wanted it, just as he’d hoped. Then he’d waited, much as he was waiting now....

The day before his plan was to unfold, he’d watched a Trisquad processing and then asked Tom Athens to come to the lab after dinner to privately discuss some thoughts he’d had on intensifying the suggestibility factor. Athens had been only too happy to accept, had listened eagerly to Griffith’s description of the strain he’d already created—couched in hypothetical terms, of course—and after a nice, hot cup of laced coffee, Athens had become the first to experience Griffith’s miracle.

Griffith smiled, remembering those initial glorious moments, the very first—and truly the most impor-tant—test of the strain’s effectiveness. He’d told Athens that the only voice he could hear was that of Nicolas Griffith, that all others would be meaningless babble—and the suggestion had taken as easy as that. In the early hours of that fateful morning, he’d played a tape of one of Athens’s own lectures for the compli-ant doctor—and the doctor had heard nothing but gibberish.

If it had failed, Griffith would have aborted the takeover, no one the wiser. He’d had an unfortunate accident in mind if the strain hadn’t worked the way it was supposed to; Athens’s body would have been found the next day, washed up on the rocky beach. But the incredible success of his creation had proved beyond doubt that it was meant to be, that he really had no choice but to continue. . . .

. .. and so, the kitchen. The drops of sedative in the coffee cups, on the pas tries, injected oh so carefully into the fruit and dissolved into the milk, the juices . ..Of the nineteen men and women who lived and worked in Caliban Cove, only one regularly skipped breakfast and didn’t drink coffee, Kim D’Santo, the ridiculous young woman who worked with the T-Virus; Griffith had sent Athens to slit her throat as she lay sleeping, before the sun came up—

• and it was a bright and sunny day, cloudless and clear as they gobbled their breakfasts and swallowed their coffee, walking out into the cool morning air, collapsing to the ground, many of them not making it out of the cafeteria before they stumbled and fell, a few crying out that they ‘d been poisoned as the words failed them and the drugs sent them to sleep—

Griffith frowned, trying to remember what had happened next. He’d selected Thurman, unable to resist the petty pleasure of showing the good doctor what he’d created. Then Alan Kinneson, although he hadn’t given the gift to Alan until later, keeping him sedated...

He knew the facts: Thurman and Athens had dis-posed of the workers and piled them in block A. Lyle Ammon had managed to keep himself hidden for a time, but had been found by the Trisquads later that evening. Griffith had eaten a late supper and gone to bed, waking up early to move papers and software

to the lab. These were facts, things that he knew—but for some reason, the reality had blurred and he couldn’t actually remember what he had seen, what had transpired for him the rest of that day. Griffith searched through his thoughts, concentrat-ing, but could only find the same hazy and uncertain images: a blinding mid-day sun, bathing the sleeping bodies in red. The scream of a gull over the cove, relentless and wild, calling to the hot wind. A coppery smell of dirt and, and—

• 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 AM 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.’”

Steve nodded, half dismayed and half relieved by the information. They’d already knocked one of the Trisquads out of the running, plus seriously wounded or killed a couple of the individuals on another team; that was good. On the other hand, it meant that there were still a couple of the squads roaming around out there—

• unless they’re currently “engaged” with David and the others. . . .

He scowled inwardly, grasping for something else to think about.

“Do you know what that means, ‘revved up the amp time’?”

Rebecca nodded slowly, worry creasing her brow. “I’m pretty sure he means that Griffith sped up the amplification process. Amplification is the term for a virus’s spread through a host.”

That didn’t sound like something he wanted to think about either. By some unspoken agreement, they hadn’t talked about the possibility of John or Karen being infected since David had left. “Great. You find anything else in there?” She shook her head. “Not really. He mentions the Ma7s a couple of times, but nothing more specific than that they’re a T-Virus experiment that didn’t work. And he’s definitely kind of an asshole.” “Kind of?”

Rebecca smiled briefly. “Okay, that’s an under-statement. He’s a money-hungry, amoral bastard.”

Steve nodded, thinking about the partial report they’d found on the Trisquads—and for that matter, the very existence of the facility. Calling the T-Virus victims “units,” setting up operating rooms and apti-tude tests to run them through like rats in a maze—

• it’s like they can’t acknowledge that they’re per-forming their experiments on human beings, on real people....

“How could they do this?” he asked softly, as much to himself as to Rebecca. “How did they sleep at night?”

Rebecca gazed at him solemnly, as if she had an answer but wasn’t sure how to say it. Finally, she sighed. “When you specialize in one field, particularly when it’s a field that demands linear thinking and a very defined focus on only one tiny element of some-thing—it’s kind of hard to explain, but it’s frighten-ingly easy to get lost in that single element, to forget there’s a world outside of that element. When you spend your days looking into a microscope, sur-rounded by numbers and letters and

processes... some people get lost. And if they were unstable to begin with, the ambition to pursue that element can take over, making everything else unimportant.” Steve saw what she was getting at and was im-pressed anew with how thoughtful she was, how clearly she communicated herself....

... all that and a smile that lights up a room; if—when we get out of this, I’m moving to Raccoon City. Or I’ll at least find out if she’s seeing anyone.... There was a sound from somewhere in the building, footsteps. Steve pushed himself off the table and walked quickly to the door.

He leaned out into the corridor and heard David’s voice calling through the empty block.

“In the back!” Steve shouted, then waited, anx-iously watching the corner in the hall for David to walk into view, John and Karen both healthy and smiling beside him. Rebecca moved to stand next to Steve, and he saw the same concern and hope written across her delicate features.

Instinctively, he groped for her hand, feeling a tingling jolt as their fingers touched, half expecting her to pull away—but she didn’t, leaning against him instead as she held his hand gently, her skin soft and warm on his.

John’s booming voice preceded him down the cor-ridor, loud and full of bright good humor. “Get your clothes on, kids, you’ve got company!”

She dropped his hand quickly, but the look that she flashed him more than made up for it—a sweet and wistful expression that made his heart skip a beat—but there was a maturity there, too, a realization of the circumstances they were in, an acknowledgment of priorities.

No more until we’re out of here.

He nodded slightly, and they turned to wait for the others.

TWELVE

REBECCA COULD STILL FEEL THE LINGER-ing warmth of Steve’s hand in hers as David, John, and Karen walked around the corner, John grinning broadly.

“Sorry to crash, but we figured you guys could use a little chaperoning,” he said. “Nothing like young love, though, am I right?”

As the three stepped into the room, Rebecca strug-gled to quash the blush she felt creeping up on her, suddenly feeling horribly unprofessional. All they’d done was hold hands, and only for a second—but they were in the middle of an operation, in hostile territory where even a moment’s lapse of concentra-tion could get them killed.

John must have picked up on her embarrassment. “Ah, don’t mind me,” he said, his grin fading. “I’m just giving Steve-o a hard time, I didn’t mean any-thing by it—“ David interrupted, shooting John a pointed glance. “I think we have more important things to discuss,” he said evenly. “We need to update, and I have a few things I’d like to go over.”

He nodded toward the journal she still held. “They found the room, but didn’t touch anything. Did you find anything else useful?”

She nodded, relieved by the news and glad for the change of subject. “It looks like there are only four

Trisquads, though the entry that mentioned it is six months old.”

David looked relieved. “That’s excellent. John and Karen had another encounter outside of D, managed to get five of them—that means there may only be one team left.”

They pulled chairs away from the small tables that lined the walls, forming them in a loose semi-circle in the middle of the room. David stayed standing, ad-dressing them solemnly.

“I’d like to do a quick recap, to make certain we’re all on the same page before we go any further. In short, this facility was used for T-Virus experimenta-tion and has been taken over by one of the researchers for reasons unknown. The other workers have been killed and the offices purged of incriminating evi-dence. Rebecca believes that the biochemist Nicolas Griffith is responsible, and the fact that the grounds are still being patrolled suggests that he’s alive, some-where in the compound—though I don’t feel we should concern ourselves with trying to find him. We’ve already completed two of the tests given to us by Dr. Ammon, through Trent, and my hope is that the ‘material’ he has hidden for us will be the evi-dence we need to formally charge Umbrella with criminal activity.”

He folded his arms and started to pace slowly as he talked, glancing between them. “Obviously there’s already plenty of proof that illegalities have occurred here; we could leave now and turn the matter over to federal authorities. My concern is that we still don’t have enough hard evidence on Umbrella’s involve-ment—other than the computer system’s software and the journal that Steve and Rebecca found, Um-brella’s name isn’t on anything, and both of those could be explained away. My feeling is that we should continue with the tests and find whatever Dr. Ammon meant for us to have before we evac—but I want to hear from each of you about it first. This isn’t an authorized op, we’re not following orders here, and if you think we should go, we go.”

Rebecca was surprised, could see that the others felt the same by their expressions. David had seemed so certain before, so enthusiastic about their chances. The look on his face now told a different story. He seemed almost apologetic about wanting to continue, and looked as though he wanted for one of them to suggest otherwise.

Why the change? What happened?

John spoke first, glancing at the rest of them before looking at David. “Well, we’ve made it this far. And if there’s only one more group of zombies out there, I say we finish up.”

Rebecca nodded. “Yeah, and we still haven’t found the main lab, we don’t know why Griffith did this—whether he suffered a psychotic break or is actually hiding something. We may not find out, but it’s worth a look. Plus, what if he destroys more evidence after we’ve gone?”

“I agree,” Steve said. “If the S.T.A.R.S. are as deeply involved with Umbrella as it looks, we’re not going to get another chance. This may be our only opportunity to dig up a connection. And we’re al-ready so close, the third test is right here—we do that one, we’re one step away from finishing.” “I’m up for it,” Karen said softly.

At the strained sound of her voice, Rebecca turned to look at her, noticing for the first time that Karen didn’t look so good. Her eyes were bloodshot, her complexion almost a pallor.

“Are you okay?” Rebecca asked.

Karen nodded, sighing. “Yeah. Headache.”

Must be a migraine, she looks like hell. . . . “What is it, David?” John asked abruptly. “What’s eatin’ you? You know something you’re not telling us?”

David stared at them for a moment, then shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I just—I have a bad feeling. Or rather, a feeling that something bad is going to happen.”

“Little late, don’tcha think?” John said, grinning.

“Where were you when we got into the raft?” David half-smiled in response, rubbing the back of his neck. “Thank you, John, I’d almost forgotten. So, it’s decided then. Let’s solve our next puzzle, shall we? Oh, Rebecca, take a look at Karen’s eye while we’re at it, it’s giving her some trouble.” They stood up and moved toward the back of the room, for the table in the northwest corner marked with a blue nine. Steve and Rebecca had already looked when they’d found the room, though there was no clue as to what the test was—a small, blank monitor screen with a ten-key hooked to it sat on the metal table, an enigma.

Rebecca motioned for Karen to sit on the chair in front of test ten, the purpose of which also escaped her—it consisted of a circuit board wired to a plank and what looked like a pair of tweezers connected to it by a black wire. She bent down to take a look, frowning. The woman’s right eye was extremely irri-tated, the pale blue cornea floating in a sea of red. Her eyelid had a bruised, swollen look.

She turned to ask for David’s flashlight—and saw that as he sat down in front of the scheduled test, the screen flickered on, several lines of type appearing in the center of the monitor.

“Some kind of motion sensor—“ Steve started to say, but David held up his hand suddenly, reading aloud what had appeared on the screen in a rapid, anxious voice.

“ ‘As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with seven wives—the seven wives had seven sacks, the seven sacks held seven cats—the seven cats had seven kits; kits, cats, sacks, wives, how many were going to Saint Ives?’” There was a digital readout on the screen, showing 00:49 and counting down. In the time it had taken David to read the question, eleven seconds had al-ready ticked off the clock.

David stared at the screen, his thoughts racing furiously as the team leaned in behind him. Tension radiated from them, and David felt a sudden prickle of sweat break out across his forehead. Don’t count, that was the clue. But what does it mean?

“Twenty-eight,” John said quickly. “No, wait, twenty-nine, including the man—“ Steve cut him off, talking just as fast. “But if they had seven kittens each, that would be forty-nine plus twenty-one, seventy, seventy-one with the man.” “But the message said don’t count,” Karen said. “If you’re not supposed to count—does that mean don’t add, or—wait, there’s the man with the wives and the speaker, that’s another one—“ Thirty-two seconds had elapsed. David’s hand hov-ered over the key pad.

Think! Don’t count, don’t count, don’t—

“One,” Rebecca said quickly. “ ‘As / was going to Saint Ives’—it doesn’t say where the man with the wives was going. That’s what it means, the clue—don’t count anyone except the one who was going to Saint Ives!”

Yes, it makes sense, a trick question—

They had twenty seconds left.

“Anyone disagree?” David asked sharply.

No answer. David hit the key, entered it—

• and the countdown stopped, sixteen seconds to spare. The screen turned itself off. From somewhere overhead, the now familiar chime sounded. David exhaled, leaning back in the chair. Thank you, Rebecca!

He turned around to tell her as much, but she was already bending to examine Karen’s eye, fixated on her patient.

“I need a flashlight,” she said, barely glancing around as John handed his to her. She turned it on, shining it into Karen’s eye as the rest of them looked on silently, watching them. Karen didn’t look well; there were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin had gone from pale to almost sickly.

“It’s pretty inflamed ... look up. Down. Left and right? Does it feel like there’s something rubbing it, or is it more like a burn?”

“Actually, more like an itch,” Karen said. “Like a mosquito bite times ten. I’ve been scratching it, though, that might be why it’s so red.” Rebecca turned off the torch, frowning. “I don’t see anything. The other one looks irritated, too . .. did it just start itching all of a sudden, or did you touch it, first?”

Karen shook her head. “I don’t remember. It just started itching, I guess.”

A look of sharp, almost violent intensity flashed across Rebecca’s face. “Before or after you were in room 101?”

David felt a cold hand clutch at his heart.

Karen suddenly looked worried. “After.” “Did you touch anything while you were in there, anything at all?”

“I don’t—“

Karen’s red eyes widened in sudden horror, and when she spoke, it was a breathless, quivering whis-per. “The gurney. There was a bloodstain on the gurney and I was thinking about—I touched it.

Oh, Jesus, I didn’t even think about it, it was dry and I, my hand wasn’t cut and oh my God, I got a headache right after my eye started itching—“ Rebecca put her hands on Karen’s shoulders, squeezing them tightly. “Karen, take a deep breath. Deep breath, okay? It may be that your eye just itches and you have a headache, so don’t jump to conclu-sions here, we don’t know anything for sure.” Her voice was low and soothing, her manner direct.

Karen blew out a shaky breath and nodded. “If her hand wasn’t cut...” John started ner-vously.

Karen answered him, her pale features composed but her voice trembling slightly. “Viruses can get into the body through mucous membranes. Nose, ears ... eyes. I knew that. I knew that but I didn’t think about it, I—wasn’t thinking about it.”

She looked up at Rebecca, and David could see that she was struggling to maintain her composure. “If I am infected, how long? How long before I become . .. incapacitated?”

Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said softly.

David felt as though a raging blackness had envel-oped him, a cloud of fear and worry and guilt so vast that it threatened to overwhelm his ability to move, even to think.

My fault. My responsibility.

“There’s a vaccine, right?” John asked, his dark gaze darting between Karen and Rebecca. “There’s a cure, wouldn’t they have a shot or something here if someone got it by accident? They’d have to, wouldn’t they?”

David felt a sudden surge of desperate hope. “Is it possible?” he asked Rebecca quickly.

The young biochemist nodded, slowly at first but then eagerly. “Yeah, it’s possible. It’s probable, they created it—“ She looked at David seriously, urgently. “We have to find the main lab, where they synthesized the virus, and quickly. If they developed a cure, that’s where the information would be. ...”

Rebecca trailed off, and David could see what she’d left unspoken in her troubled gaze; if there was a cure. If Dr. Griffith hadn’t taken the information there, too.

If they could find it in time.

“Ammon’s message,” Steve said. “In that note, he said we should destroy the lab—maybe he left us a map, or directions.”

David stood up, his hope building. “Karen, are you feeling well enough to—“ “—Yes,” she said, cutting him off, standing up. “Yes, let’s go.”

Her red eyes were bright with fervent intensity, a mix of despair and wild hope that made David’s heart ache to see.

God, Karen, I’m so, so sorry!

“Double time,” he said, already turning for the door. “Let’s move.”

They quickly jogged for the front of the building, John’s jaw clenched, his thoughts a grimly determined loop of angry intention.

No way some goddamn bug is taking Karen down, no chance, and if I find the bastard who set this nightmare up he’s Dead, capital D, Dead meat. Not Karen, no way in hell....

They reached the front door and silently drew weapons, checking them, tensely impatient for David to give the signal. Karen, always so cool and collected in times of stress, had a shocked vagueness about her, like she’d just been kicked in the gut and hadn’t yet managed to take a breath. It was the same look that John had seen time and again on the faces of disaster survivors—the haunted disbelief in the eyes, the slack and terrible blankness of expression that spoke of a yawning emptiness deep inside. It hurt him to see her like that, hurt him and made him even angrier. Karen Driver wasn’t supposed to look like that. “I lead, John in back, straight line,” David said softly.

John saw that he looked almost as freaked as Karen, though in a different way. It was guilt gnawing at their captain, he could see it in his reluctant gaze, the tight set of his mouth. John wished he could tell him that blaming himself was wrong, but there wasn’t time and he didn’t have the right words for it. David would have to take care of himself, just as they all would. “Ready? Go.”

David pushed the door open and then they were slipping through, back into the gentle hiss of waves and the pale blue light of the moon. David, then Karen, Steve, Rebecca, and finally John, crouched and running across the packed dirt of the open compound.

There was darkness and the scent of pine, of salt, but John’s soldier mind wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t already know as they pounded through the shadows. There was only anger, and fear for Karen—making the sudden blast of M-16 fire a total surprise. Shit!

John dove for the ground as the thundering rattle opened up to their right, saw that they were just over halfway to block E as he rolled and started to fire. Then the air was filled with the blast of nine-millime-ter rounds, crashing over the steady pulse of automat-ic rifles.

Can’t see, can’t target—

He found the muzzle flashes at three o’clock and jerked the Beretta around, squeezing the trigger six, seven, eight times. The stutter of orange-white light blocked the shooters from view but he saw one of the flashes disappear, heard the clatter decrease—

• and a rage overtook him, not the “soldier mind” but a blinding, screaming fury at the diseased attack-ers that far exceeded any he’d ever known. They wanted Karen to die, those numb, brainless night-mares wanted to stop them from saving her. Not Karen. NOT KAREN.

A strange, feral howl beat at his ears as he pushed away from the dusty earth and then he was standing, running, firing. Only when he heard the shouts of the others, the Berettas except for his holding fire, did he realize that the howl was coming from him. John ran forward, screaming as he fired again and again at the things that meant to slow them up, to kill them, to claim Karen as one of their own. His thoughts were no longer words, just an endless, form-less negative—a denial of their existence and what had created them.

He charged ahead, not seeing that they had stopped firing, that they were falling, that the shadows had fallen silent except for the thunder of his semi and the scream that poured from his shaking body. Then he was standing over them and the Beretta had stopped crashing and jumping, even though he still pulled the trigger.

Three of them, white where there was no red, decayed flesh bursts covering their pitiful, wasted forms. Click. Click. Click.

One of them had a face that was a mass of puckered scar tissue, twisting white risers of gnarled skin except for where a fresh, bloody hole had punched through its forehead. Another, one eye spattered against its withered cheek, pooling viscous fluid in the rotting cup of its ear.

Click. Click.

The third was still alive. Half of its throat was gone, tattered to pulp, and its mouth opened and closed soundlessly, opened and closed, its filmed dark eyes blinking slowly up at him.

Click.

He was dry-firing, the scream dying away in his ragged throat. It was the sound of the hammer falling uselessly against hot metal that finally released him from the rage—that, and the slow, helpless blink of the wretched thing at his feet.

It didn’t know what it was. It didn’t know who they were. Once it had been a man, and now it was rotting garbage with a gun and a mission it couldn’t possibly understand.

They took his soul. . . .

“John?”

A warm hand on his back, Karen’s voice low and easy next to him. Steve and David stepped into view, staring down at the gaping, blinking shell of humanity in the shaded moonlight, the last remnant of an experiment in madness.

“Yeah,” he whispered. “Yeah, I’m here.” David trained his Beretta on the monster’s skull and spoke softly. “Stand back.”

John turned away, started walking back for their last destination with Karen at his side, Rebecca’s slight form in front of him. The shot was incredibly loud, a booming crack that seemed to shake the ground beneath their feet.

Not Karen, oh please not one of us. That’s no way to go out, no way to die—

Then David and Steve were with them and without speaking, they broke into a jog for block E, moving quickly through the emptiness that had claimed the night. The Trisquads were no more—but the disease that made them might even now be coursing through Karen’s body, turning her into a creature with no mind, no soul, doomed to a fate worse than death. John picked up speed, silently swearing to himself that if they found this Dr. Griffith, he was going to be awfully goddamned sorry that they did.

THIRfEF.n

THE E BLOCK WAS NO DIFFERENT THAN THE

first four they’d encountered, as bland and industrial and stale as the rest of them, a study in concrete efficiency. They moved quickly through the stuffy halls, turning on lights as they went, searching for the room that held the final clue to Dr. Ammon’s secret. It didn’t take long; almost half of the structure was taken up by an indoor shooting range, where David had found boxes of loaded M-16 mags—but no rifles to go with them. John had asked if he should retrieve the Trisquad’s weapons, which Rebecca promptly vetoed. The rifles were hot, probably crawling with virus.

Like Karen’s blood by now, streams of replicating

virions bursting from cells, searching for new cells to

attach to and use and destroy....

“Here!” Steve called from farther down the wind-ing corridor, and Rebecca hurried toward him, Karen

and John not far behind. David was already standing with Steve by the closed door, the red, green, and blue triangles a sign that they’d hit on the right room. Steve’s gaze seemed to seek her out, but was blank of all emotion except worry. She didn’t mind, noted it only absently. Karen’s infection, John’s insane run at the Trisquad—there wasn’t room in her for anything but the need to find the lab, to find help for Karen. Steve opened the door and they filed inside, Rebecca continuing to watch Karen closely for signs that the virus had progressed—and wondering what she should do with the information she’d picked up so far about the amplification time. She didn’t really have any doubts that Karen had been exposed, and knew that no one else did, either—but what should she say?

Do I tell her that it might only take hours? Do I pull David aside? If there’s a cure, she has to get it before the damage is too great, before it starts to fry her brain—before it dumps so much dopamine into her that she stops being Karen Driver and becomes. . . something else.

Rebecca didn’t know how to handle it. They were already doing all that they could, as fast as they could, and she didn’t know enough about the T-Virus to assume anything. She also didn’t want to see Karen any more terrified than she was already. The woman was doing her best to control it, but it was obvious that she was on the edge of a breakdown, from the desperation in her bloodred eyes to the growing tremor of her hands. And the Trisquads had almost certainly been injected with much larger amounts than Karen had been exposed to; maybe she had days....

.. .first symptoms in less than an hour?Don’t kid yourself. You have to tell her, to warn her and everyone else of what could happen. Soon.

She pushed the thought aside almost frantically, looking around at the room they’d entered. It was smaller than the test chambers they’d come across, and emptier. There was a long meeting table pushed to the back, a half dozen chairs behind it. In the front of the room was a small shelf coming off the wall, only a few feet long and a foot deep. There were three large buttons on the flat surface, red, green, and blue. The wall behind the shelf was tiled in large, smooth gray tiles made from some kind of industrial plastic. “That’s it,” Steve said. “Blue to access.” With barely a second’s hesitation, David walked to the counter and pushed the blue button—

• and a woman’s voice spoke coolly from a hidden speaker above, startling them. It was a recording, the bland tone eerily reminding Rebecca of the final moments at the Spencer estate, the triggering system tape.

“Blue series completed. Access reward.” One of the tiles behind the shelf slid away, revealing a dark recess set into the concrete. As David reached into the hidden space, Rebecca felt a surge of frus-trated anger and disgust for Umbrella, for what she realized they had done. It was despicable. All those tests, all that work—set up to dole out treats to T-Virus victims. Get through the red series, good dog, here’s your bone. . . and what was their reward, for making it through the tests? A piece of meat? Drugs, to ease their hunger? Maybe a brand new weapon for them to train with? Jesus, did they even understand what they’d been doing?

She saw the same curled sneers of horror and disgust on the faces of the others—and saw the same growing dismay as they watched David pull a single tiny item from the recess, what looked like a credit card with a slip of paper stuck to one side. They gathered around him as he held the item up, his dark gaze heavy with an almost manic disappoint-ment. It was a light green key card, the kind used to open electronic doors, blank except for a magnetic strip—and the scrawled words on the small square of paper said only:

LIGHTHOUSE-ACCESS 135-SOUTHWEST/EAST.

“Handwriting’s the same as on Ammon’s note,” Steve said hopefully. “Maybe the lab is in the light-house. . . .”

“One way to find out,” John said. “Let’s go.” He seemed angry, the same look he wore since their discovery of Karen’s exposure to the virus. After watching him charge the Trisquad outside, Rebecca almost hoped that they’d come across Dr. Griffith;

John would tear him apart.

David nodded, slipping the card into his vest. The fear and guilt that he felt were obvious, playing across his features in a constant, twitching mask. “Right. Karen . . . ?”

She nodded, and Rebecca saw that her already pale skin had taken on a waxy tone, as if the top layers were becoming translucent. Even as she watched, Karen started to scratch absently at her arms. “Yeah, I’m good,” she said quietly.

She has to know. She deserves to know.

Rebecca knew it couldn’t wait any longer. Choosing her words carefully, aware of their limited time, she turned to Karen and spoke as calmly as she could. “Look, I don’t know what they’ve done with the T-Virus here, but there’s a chance that you could start to experience more advanced symptoms in a relatively short amount of time. It’s important that you tell me, tell all of us how you’re doing, physically and psycho-logically. Any changes at all, we need to know, okay?” Karen smiled weakly, still scratching at her arms. “I’m scared shitless, how’s that? And I’m starting to itch all over. . . ”

She turned her red eyes to David, then to Steve and John before looking back at Rebecca. “If—if I start to act... irrationally, you’ll do something, won’t you? You won’t let me—hurt anyone?”

A single tear slid down one pale cheek, but she didn’t look away, her wet, crimson gaze as firm and strong as it had ever been.

Rebecca swallowed, struggling to sound confident and reassuring, awed by the bravery she saw in Karen’s eyes—and wondering how much longer that bravery would hold up beneath the roar of the T-Virus running through her veins.

“We’re going to find the cure before it comes to that,” she said, and hoped that she wasn’t telling Karen a lie.

“Move out,” David said tightly.

They moved out.

The grounds of the facility were on a definite gentle slant, rising to the north, but as they left the E block and started for the towering black structure that perched over the cove, the curving slope became much steeper. The rocky soil angled up sharply, maybe as much as a thirty-degree incline, making the half kiick walk into a hike. David ignored the strain in his back and legs; he was too worried about Karen and too busy tearing away at his own incompetence to bother with physical discomfort.

They were closer to the shimmering waters of the cove than they had been since climbing out of them, and the cool, whispering breeze off the moonlit sur-face would have been pleasant on some other night, in some other place. The swaying ripples of soft light and the soothing murmur of waves were almost a mockery of their desperate situation, such a sharp contrast to the chaos inside of him that he found himself almost wishing that there were still Trisquads roaming around.

At least then this would feel like the nightmare it is. And I could do something, I could fight back, defend them against something tangible. . ..

Ahead of them, the rising land curled around to the east, dropping away to a foaming sea far below. The cove itself was fairly calm, but the sound of waves smashing against the cliffs grew louder as they hurried on, approaching where the ocean met towering, cave-riddled rock walls. John had taken the lead, Karen next and then the two younger team members. David brought up the rear, dividing his attention between the compound to their left and behind and the dark structures ahead.

Directly in back of the lighthouse was what had to be the dormitory, a long, flat building almost twice the size of the concrete blocks they’d left behind. They hadn’t come across quarters for the Umbrella workers anywhere else, and it had the look of a bunkhouse—designed for sleeping and eating, no thought given to aesthetic appeal. They probably should check it out, but David didn’t want to waste a moment in their search for the lab.

The thought brought on another wave of guilt and angst that he tried unsuccessfully to block out. He needed to be effective, to get them to the laboratory as quickly as possible without floundering in his doubts and emotions—but all he kept thinking, kept wishing was that he’d been infected instead.

But you’re not, some tiny part of him whispered, Karen’s got it and wishing is pointless. It won’t cure her and it will cloud your ability to lead. David ignored the small voice, thinking instead of how badly he’d screwed them all. Who was he, to lead a fight against Umbrella, to clean up the S.T.A.R.S. and bring honor back to the job? He couldn’t even keep his people safe, couldn’t plan a simple covert op—couldn’t even battle the demons of self-doubt and horrified guilt that raged inside of him. They neared the lifeless dorm building, John slow-ing to let the rest of them catch up. David saw that his team was tired, but at least Karen didn’t look any worse. In the gentle light of the swollen moon, she seemed pale and somehow fragile. The deathly pallor she’d worn beneath the fluorescents had translated into a soft, porcelain cast, the redness of her gaze turning to shadow. If he hadn’t known better . . . Ah, but you do. How long now, before that milky skin starts to peel, to flake away? How long before she can’t be trusted with a weapon, before you have to restrain her from—

Stop it!

He let them catch their breath, turning to get a better look at the lighthouse less than twenty meters away—and felt his stomach clench, his heart shudder suddenly for no reason that he could have explained. It was an old lighthouse, a tall, cylindrical outdated building, weathered and dark and as seemingly de-serted as the rest of the compound. Looking at it, he experienced the feeling he’d had earlier of impending doom, of options closing down behind them and the spinning wheel of darkness ahead.

“Come on,” John said briskly, but David stopped him with a hand on his arm, shaking his head slowly. Not safe. That tiny voice again, familiar yet strange. He stared at the looming tower, feeling lost, feeling uncertain and out of control as the wind swept over them, the waves pounding the cliff. They were wait-ing. It wasn’t safe, but they had to go in, they couldn’t just stand there—

• and it hit him suddenly, a clear realization of what it was that had gone wrong in his mind. What was really wrong. It wasn’t his competence, it wasn’t his ability to think or plan or fight. It was something far worse, something he might have noticed much earlier if he hadn’t let himself get so wrapped up with guilt.

I stopped trusting my instincts. Without the security of the S.T.A.R.S. behind me, I forgot to listen to that voice—so terrified of making a mistake that I lost my ability to hear, to know what to do. Every time the fear hit me, I pushed through it, I ignored it—and I made it that much stronger.

Even as he thought it, as he believed it, he felt the blackness of doubt lift from his exhausted thoughts.

The guilt eased back, allowing a kind of clarity to filter through—and with it, the tiny voice inside took on a power that he’d almost forgotten it could have. It’s not safe, so hit the door fast, two in low, the rest high and covered outside—

All of this flashed through his mind in seconds. He turned to look at his team, watching him, waiting for him to lead. And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he knew that he could.

“I think it’s a trap,” he said. “John, you and I go in low, I’ll take west—Rebecca, I want you and Steve to stand on either side of the door and fire at anything standing; keep firing until we call clear. Sorry, Karen, you’ll sit this one out.”

They nodded all around and started for the deep shadows that surrounded the ominous tower, David in front, finally feeling as though he was doing some-thing useful. Maybe that spinning destiny was too vast, moving too quickly for them to deny—but he wasn’t going to let it run them over without at least putting up a fight.

Karen deserved that much. They all did. Karen hung back as they moved into position, leaning against the back wall of the large building behind the lighthouse to watch. She felt winded by the climb up the hill, winded and strange and there was a buzzing in her brain that wouldn’t go away, wouldn’t let her fully concentrate. . ..

... getting sick. Getting sicker, fast. It scared her, but somehow it wasn’t as bad as it had been. In fact, it wasn’t really that scary at all. The initial terror had gone, leaving her with only a memo-ry of the adrenaline rush, like a whiff of a bad dream. The itch was distracting, but not exactly an itch anymore. What had felt like a million bug bites on her skin, each separate and distinct and screaming for relief, had—connected. It was the only way she could think to describe the sensation. They had connected, had become a thick blanket over her body that crawled and squirmed, as if her skin had come to life and was scratching itself. It was weird, but not exactly unpleasant—

“Now!”

At the sound of David’s voice, Karen focused on the sudden action in front of her, the buzzing hum in her head making it all seem strange, speeded up somehow. The door to the lighthouse crashing open, David and John leaping into the blackness, bullets flashing and booming. The high, whining rattle of an M-16 inside. Steve and Rebecca, ducking and firing, out and in and out again, their bodies blurred by speed, their Berettas dancing like black metal birds. It was happening so fast that it seemed to take a long, long time for it to stop. Karen frowned, wonder-ing how that could be—

• and then saw David and John step back out into the blue light of the moon, and realized that she was happy to see them. Even with their strange and distorted faces, their long bodies that moved too quickly. . .

what’s happening to me.

Karen shook her head but the buzzing only seemed to get louder—and she was afraid again, afraid that David and John and Steve and Rebecca would leave her behind. They’d leave her behind and she wouldn’t have anyone to, to—ease her mind. That was bad. David was in front of her, staring at her with eyes like wet, dark cherries. “Karen, are you okay?” At the look on his round and pointed face and the sound of softness in his voice, Karen felt happy again, and knew that she had to tell him the truth. With a tremendous effort, she found the strength to say what had to be said, her voice coming out of the crawling body and the buzzing, sounding as strange to her as the wind.

“It’s getting worse now,” she said. “I don’t think right, David. Don’t leave me.”

John and Rebecca, their hot, hot hands touching her, leading her away and to the darkness of the open door. Her body worked, but her mind was clouded by the trembling buzzing hum. There were things she wanted to tell them, things that drifted through the cloud like flashes of pretty pictures—but the building they moved her to was dark and hot, and there was a body on the floor holding a rifle. His face, she could see. His face wasn’t strange; it was white, white and curling, textured like the buzzing and the crawling. It was a face that made sense.

“I got the door,” Steve said, looking up and grin-ning, white, white teeth. “One-three-five.” There was a keypad next to an open hole, stairs leading down, and Steve’s teeth disappeared, his flat face wrinkling.

“Karen—“

“We have to hurry.”

“Hang on baby, hang on, we’ll be there soon—“ Karen let them help her, wondering why their faces looked so strange, wondering why they smelled so hot and good.

FOVRJEEH

ATHENS HAD FAILED.

Dr. Griffith stared at the blinking white light by the door, cursing Athens, cursing Lyle Ammon, cursing his luck. He hadn’t told Athens how to get back inside, which could only mean that the intruders had made it past him. Ammon had left them a message or sent them one, it didn’t matter—all that mattered was that they were coming and he had to assume that they had the key. He’d torn down the markers weeks ago, but perhaps they had directions, perhaps they’d find him and—

Don’t panic, no need for panic. You prepared for this, simply move on, next plan. Division first, twofold effect—less firepower, bait for later. . . and a chance to see how well Alan can perform.

Griffith turned to Dr. Kinneson and spoke quickly, keeping the instructions clear and simple, the route as easy as possible. Griffith had already worked out the questions they’d probably ask, though he knew there was a chance they’d try for more information. He gave Alan several random phrases to respond with, then gave him the small semi-automatic pistol from Dr. Chin’s desk drawer, watching as Alan tucked it beneath his lab coat to make sure it was hidden. The bullet carrier was empty, but he didn’t think it was possible to tell, not if the hammer was pulled back. He also gave Alan his key; a risk, but then the entire scenario was a risk. With the fate of the world resting in his hands, he’d take any chance necessary. After Alan had gone, Griffith sat down in a chair to wait for a reasonable amount of time, his gaze wan-dering to the six stainless canisters in restless antici-pation. His plans wouldn’t fail; the righteousness of his work would see him through this invasion. If Alan was caught out, there were still the

Ma7s, there was still Louis, there were still the syringes and his hiding place, the airlock controls in easy reach. Past all of that, there was still the sunrise, waiting.

Dr. Griffith smiled dreamily.

Karen could still walk, still seemed to understand at least part of what they were saying to her, but the few words she could manage didn’t seem to relate to anything. As they’d gone down the stairs from the lighthouse, she’d said “hot” twice. As they’d walked into the wide, dank tunnel at the base of the steps, she’d said, “I don’t want,” an expression of fear on her deathly pale, searching face. Rebecca was terrified that even if they found a way to reverse the viral load, it would be too late.

It had all happened so suddenly, so fast that she could still hardly comprehend it. There’d been a man waiting for them in the darkness of the lighthouse, a trap just as David had intuited. As soon as they’d gone in, he’d opened fire with an automatic rifle, strafing the door from the shadows beneath the wind-ing metal stairs. Thanks to David’s plan, it had been over in seconds—and as Steve had discovered the access door and punched in the code, Rebecca and John had looked over their waiting attacker, had seen in the narrow beam of John’s flashlight that the man had been infected—his paper-white skin was flaking and creased with strange, peeling etched lines. He’d looked somehow different than the Trisquad victims she’d seen, less decayed, his open, staring eyes some-how more human . . . but then David had gone to get Karen and Rebecca’s interest had been suddenly and cruelly diverted.

It had been the walk up the hill, she’d decided. Even though it shouldn’t have made a difference, she couldn’t imagine what else might have brought on the amplification so quickly. Somehow, the T-Virus must have responded to the physiological changes of Ka-ren’s increased heart rate and circulation—but as they’d led the confused and stumbling woman into the lighthouse, Rebecca had found that she’d stopped caring about how; all she wanted was to get to the lab, to try and salvage what was left of Karen Driver’s sanity.

The tunnel beneath the lighthouse seemed to lead back toward the compound in a curving, twisting trail, and was carved from the heavy limestone of the cliff. Mining lights were strung along the walls, casting strange shadows as they moved forward, silent and grimly afraid, John and Steve half-pulling Karen between them. Rebecca was last, again feeling a horrible sense of deja vu as they stumbled along, remembering the tunnels beneath the Spencer estate. The same cold damp emanated from the stone, and she felt the same terrible feelings of moving toward unknown danger, exhausted and afraid of screwing up—of not being able to prevent a disaster. The disaster has already happened, she thought helplessly, watching Karen struggle to keep walking. We’re losing her. In another hour, probably less, she’ll be too far gone to ever come back.

As it was, John and Steve shouldn’t be touching her. In a single, easy movement she could get at either one of them, biting before they had a chance to let go. Even that concept made her sick with sorrow and an aching, heavy feeling of loss.

The tunnel veered to the left, and Rebecca realized they had to be incredibly close to the ocean; the walls seemed to tremble and shake from a muted thunder beyond, and the tunnel was thick with a damp and fishy smell. Parts of the floor seemed too smooth to have been created by human hands, and Rebecca wondered vaguely if the tunnel opened up ahead somewhere, perhaps had once been flooded by the sea—

“Bloody hell,” David whispered angrily. “Shit.” Rebecca looked up. When she saw what was ahead, she felt her last flicker of hope for Karen die. We’ll never find it in time.

The tunnel did open up, a few hundred meters ahead of where David had stopped. It widened con-siderably, in fact—and was connected by five smaller tunnels, each branching off in a slightly different direction.

“Which way is southwest?” John asked anxiously.

Karen leaned against him, her head rolling forward. David’s voice was still angry, frustration raising his words to an echo that bounced through the five stone corridors, circling back to fill the cavern. “I don’t know, I thought we were already headed southwest—and yet none of these is in direct align-ment, and none head directly east, either.” They moved into the rough-hewn cavern, staring helplessly at the smooth tunnels, each of them strung with lights that disappeared around turns and bends. They had obviously been carved by water, perhaps had once been connected to the sea caves that David had originally meant for them to find. The tunnels weren’t as wide as the one they stood in, but were wide enough to accommodate human passage com-fortably enough, and at least three meters high. There was no way to guess which one was used to get to the lab—

• or if any of them lead to the lab, we don’t even know for certain that it’s down here. . . . “If none of them goes east, then we have to pick the one that looks the most likely to go southwest,” Steve said quietly. “Besides, east of here is water.” Karen mumbled something unintelligible, and Rebecca stepped forward worriedly to see how she was. Though John and Steve still steadied her, she seemed to have no trouble standing on her own. Rebecca touched her clammy, sweating forehead and Karen’s rolling eyes fixed on her, glassy and red, the pupils dilated.

“Karen, how are you doing?” she asked softly. Karen blinked slowly. “Thirsty,” she whispered, her voice bubbling and liquid sounding. Still responsive, thank God. . . .

Rebecca touched her throat lightly, feeling the rapid, thready pulse beneath her fingers. It was defi-nitely quicker than before, up in the lighthouse. Whatever the virus was doing to her, it wouldn’t be much longer before Karen’s body gave out. Rebecca turned, feeling desperate and angry, want-ing to scream for somebody to do something—

• and heard the pounding footsteps, echoing up through one of the tunnels. She grabbed for her Beretta, saw John and David do the same as Steve held onto Karen.

Which one, where’s it coming from? Griffith? Is it Griffith?

The sound seemed to circle, coming from every-where at once—and then Rebecca saw him, appearing from around a comer in the passage second from the right. A stumbling figure, a flapping, dusty lab coat—

• and then he saw them, and even from fifteen meters away, Rebecca could see the stunned and almost hysterical joy that swept across his face. The man ran for them, his short brown hair wild and disheveled, his eyes bright and lips trembling. He wasn’t holding any kind of weapon, though Rebecca kept hers raised.

“Oh, thank God, thank God! You have to help me! Dr. Thurman, he’s gone mad, we have to get out of here!”

He staggered out of the tunnel and nearly ran into David, apparently oblivious to the pistols trained on him as he babbled on.

“We have to go, there’s a boat we can use, we have to get out before he kills us all—“ David shot a glance back, saw that Rebecca and John still had him covered. He tucked the Beretta into his side holster and stepped forward, taking the man’s arm.

“Easy, calm down. Who are you, do you work here?”

“Alan Kinneson,” the man gasped. “Thurman kept me locked up in the lab but he heard you coming and I managed to get away. But he’s crazy. You have to help me get to the boat! There’s a radio, we can call for help!”

The lab!

“Which way is the laboratory?” David asked quickly.

Kinneson didn’t seem to hear him, too panicked by whatever he thought Thurman might do to them. “The radio’s on the boat, we can call for help and then get away!”

“The laboratory,” David repeated. “Listen to me—did you just come from there?”

Kinneson turned and pointed to the tunnel that was next to the one he’d come from, the one in the middle.

“The lab is that way—“

He pointed back the way he’d come. “—and the boat’s down there. These caves are like a maze.” Though he seemed to have calmed slightly as he pointed to the tunnels, when he turned back to face them, he looked as hysterical as he had before. He seemed to be in his mid-thirties at first glance, but David noticed he had deep lines etched at the comers of his eyes and mouth and realized he had to be much older. Whoever he was and however old he was, he was caught in the grip of an almost mindless panic. “The radio’s on the boat, we can call for help and then get away!”

David’s thoughts raced in time with his pounding heart. This was it, this was their chance—

• we get to the lab, make this Thurman give us the cure and then get out of this place, before anyone else gets hurt—

He turned to look at the others and saw the same hopeful looks that he knew he wore, John and Steve both nodding sharply. Rebecca didn’t look as en-thused. She jerked her head back, motioning for David to move out of Kinneson’s earshot. “Excuse us a moment,” David said, forcing a politeness that he didn’t feel. Kinneson was one of the researchers from Trent’s list.

“We have to hurry!” The man babbled, but he didn’t follow as David stepped back toward the others, the four of them leaning together to talk, Karen resting against Steve’s arm.

Rebecca’s voice was hushed and worried. “David, we can’t take Karen to the lab if Griffith—if Thurman is there; what if we have to fight?”

John nodded, shooting a glance at the wild-eyed researcher. “And I don’t think we should leave this guy alone, he’s likely to take off with our ride home.” David frowned, thinking. Steve was a better shot, but John was stronger. If they had to force Thurman to give them the T-Virus cure, John could probably intimidate him more easily.

“We split up. Steve, you take Karen to the boat, keep an eye on Kinneson. We’ll go to the lab, get what we need and then meet you there. Agreed?” Tight nods, and then David turned, addressing Kinneson.

“We need to get to the laboratory, but our friend Karen isn’t well. We’d like for you to take her and an escort to the boat, and wait for us.”

Kinneson’s eyes seemed to blank out for just a second, the strange, vacant look there and gone so quickly that David wasn’t even sure he’d seen it. “We have to hurry,” he said quickly, then turned and started back down the passage he’d appeared from, walking at a brisk pace.

David felt a sudden worry, staring at Kinneson’s rapidly receding back, his dirty lab coat floating out behind him.

He didn’t even ask who we are,. ..

As Steve and Karen started to enter the tunnel, David touched Steve’s arm, speaking softly. “Watch him carefully, Steve. We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Steve nodded and moved off after the strange Dr.

Kinneson, Karen stumbling along next to him. John and Rebecca were already standing in front of the middle passageway, weapons still in hand. The chamber shook as outside, a muffled thunder roared. Without speaking, the three of them started down the gloomy tunnel in a tired but determined jog, ready to face the human monster behind the many tragedies of Caliban Cove.

They turned the first corner, Karen hanging onto his shoulder with a cold and sweating hand—and the researcher was just rounding a bend farther ahead, a good hundred meters away. Steve caught a glimpse of fluttering white and the heel of a black loafer, and then he was out of sight, clattering footsteps moving away.

Great. Lost in a goddamn sea cave labyrinth because Dr. Strangelove has a schedule to keep—

Karen let out a low moan of soft distress and Steve felt the cold, hard knot in his stomach clench tighter, his fear of getting lost nothing next to fear he felt for Karen. She was leaning on him more heavily, her feet dragging against the dank limestone floor. David, John, Rebecca, please hurry, please don’t let Karen get any worse—

He pulled her along as quickly as he could, con-cerned about catching up to Kinneson, worried about the others putting themselves in danger, afraid for the desperately sick woman who clung to his side. Except for meeting Rebecca, it had to be the worst day of his life. He’d only been with the S.T.A.R.S. for a year and a half, and while he’d been in threatening situations before, they didn’t come close to what he’d experi-enced in the few short hours since they’d been knocked out of the raft.

Sea monsters, zombies with guns—and now Karen. Smart, serious Karen, losing her mind, maybe turning into one of those things. We’re so close to getting out of here and it may still be too late. ...

As they reached the turn in the tunnel, Steve realized that he couldn’t hear Kinneson’s footsteps anymore. He staggered around the corner, thinking that he should call for him to wait up, not to get too far ahead—

• and he stopped cold, his gut plummeting to somewhere around his knees. Kinneson stood two meters away, holding a .25 semi-automatic, his face and eyes as strangely blank and lifeless as a manne-quin’s. He stepped forward and pressed the small bore into Steve’s stomach, hard, jerking the Beretta out of his holster and then stepping back. The flat-eyed doctor moved to one side, now holding both weapons on them as he motioned for Steve to move in front of him.

“Watch him carefully, Steve. ...”

Steve held on to Karen’s side, fumbling through his thoughts for ways to stall, to reason with Kinneson, his body tensing to spring even as his brain screamed at him to go along, not to get shot—

• what would happen to Karen?

“You will come to the lab,” Kinneson said tone-lessly, “or I’ll kill you.”

It was the inflectionless voice of a computer, com-ing from the blankly merciless face of a man who suddenly didn’t seem human, not at all. “We know what you did here,” Steve spat. “We know all about your goddamn Trisquads, we know about the T-Virus, and if you want to get out of this without—“

“You will come to the lab or I’ll kill you.” Steve felt a helpless shudder run through his body. Kinneson’s tone hadn’t altered at all, his gaze as fixed and emotionless as his voice. Steve noticed the lines then, the deep, spidering lines that swept away from his cold brown eyes, sat at the corners of his slack and expressionless lips.

Oh my God—

“You will come to the lab or I’ll kill you,” he repeated, and this time, he raised both weapons—holding them inches away from Karen’s sagging head. Steve knew she was dying, knew that there was a good chance she’d lose against the virus and become a violent, insane creature before the night was through—

• but I have to protect her for as long as I can. If I sacrificed her to save myself and there was even a chance that she could’ve been cured. . . Steve wouldn’t, couldn’t do it. Even if it meant his own life.

Holding Karen tightly, he stepped ahead of the thing and started to walk.

Enough time had passed. If the intruders had done what they were supposed to do, they would have split up, some of them heading mistakenly for the pen, some accompanying the good doctor back to the lab. If Alan had failed, he’d at least have stalled the intruders long enough to keep them out in the open. Either way, it was time.

Griffith tapped the control panel for the Ma7 enclo-sure, thinking wistfully how much fun it would be to see the looks on their faces. The red light flashed to green, signifying that the gate was fully open. No matter, he supposed. So long as they died.

FlFtEEn

THE WINDING TUNNEL SEEMED TO GO ON

forever. Every time they rounded a turn, Rebecca expected to see a sealed door, a slot set next to it for the key card that David carried. As the corners continued, the hanging lights going on for another stretch of tunnel, each as empty and featureless as the stretch before, she stopped wishing for the door. A sign

would suffice, an arrow painted on the wall, a chalk mark—anything that would put to rest her growing suspicion that they’d been misled. Lied to by an Umbrella scientist? Perish the thought. . . .

Tired sarcasm aside, Kinneson had been weird, but had definitely seemed frightened to the point of hysteria. Could he have been confused in his panic, pointed to the wrong passage? Or was the lab just better hidden than they thought?

Or did he send us off on a snipe hunt, some dead-end cave—or even a trap, something dangerous, meant to keep us out of the way while he...

While he did something to Steve and Karen. The thought frightened her even more than the concept of walking into a trap. Karen was desperately ill, she wouldn’t be able to defend herself, and Steve—

No, Steve’s okay. He’d be able to take Kinneson in a heartbeat—

Except that Karen was with him. A very sick Karen, struggling just to stay upright.

Their jog had slowed to a shag, David and John both breathing heavily, frowns deepening across their exhausted faces. David held up a hand, stopping them.

“I don’t think it’s this way,” he panted. “We should have seen something by now. And the piece of paper with the key card said southwest, east—I’m not sure, but I think after that last turn, we’re heading west.” John bobbed his head, his short, tight hair glisten-ing with sweat. “I don’t know which way we’re going, but I know I think Kinneson’s full of shit. The guy works for Umbrella, for chrissake”

“I agree,” Rebecca said, breathing deeply. “I think we should go back. We have to get to the lab, soon. I don’t think—“ Clank!

They froze, staring at each other. From somewhere farther down the endless tunnel, something made of heavy metal had just been moved.

“The lab?” Rebecca said hopefully. “Could it—“ A low, strange sound cut her off, the words dying in her throat as the noise picked up strength. It was like nothing she’d ever heard before—a dog howling, combined with an off-key whistling whine and the sound of a newborn baby’s desperate cry. It was a lonely, terrible sound, rising and falling through the tunnel, finally building to a warbling, mournful shriek—

• then it was j oined by several others.

She was suddenly absolutely certain that she didn’t want to see what was making that sound, even as David started backing up, his face pale and eyes wide. “Run,” he said, training his Beretta on the empty passage ahead of them, waiting until they had stum-bled past before turning to follow.

Rebecca felt a burst of incredible energy as adrena-line gushed into her body, sent her sprinting through the shadowy tunnel to escape the rising shrieks of whatever was behind them. John was just in front of her, his muscled arms and legs pumping madly, and she could hear the clattering steps of David on her heels.

The howls were getting louder, and Rebecca could feel the stone vibrate beneath her flying feet, the heavy, galloping steps of the shrieking beasts thunder-ing after them.

• not gonna make it—

Even as she realized that they’d be overtaken, she

heard David gasp out, “Next turn—“

• and as they reached the end of the empty stretch where the tunnel curved again, Rebecca whirled around, raising the Beretta in her sweating, shaking hand, training it back on the last turn they’d taken. John and David flanked her, gasping, nine-milli-meters aimed alongside hers. Twenty meters of blank passage, filled with the now deafening cries of their unseen pursuers.

As the first of them tore into view, all three of them fired, slugs ripping into the creature that at first Rebecca thought was a lioness—then a giant lizard—then a dog. She caught only a mad, patchwork vision of the impossible thing, seeing parts of it that her mind fit into a whole—the slitted, cat-like pupils. The giant snake head, a gaping, slavering jaw filled with bladed teeth. The squat and powerful barrel-chested body, sand-colored, thick legs bowing in front, mus-cular, springing haunches propelling it toward them at an incredible speed—

• and even as the bullets found its strange, reptili-an flesh, there was another behind it—

• and the first explosive rounds that smacked into the thick body of the closest creature knocked it off of its clawed feet, staggered it backward as blooms of watery blood spattered the tunnel walls—

• and, shaking its head, screaming in ferocious sorrow, it launched itself at them again.

• oh shit—

Rebecca squeezed the trigger again, four, five, six, her mind screaming as loudly as the two monstrous animals that ran at them, eight, nine, ten—

• and the first went down, stayed down, but there was still the second and now a third, tearing down the tunnel, and the Beretta only held fifteen rounds—

We’re gonna die—

David jumped back, behind the line of thundering fire. An empty clip skittered across the floor, and then he was next to her again, aiming and squeezing, the Beretta jerking smoothly in his practiced hand. Rebecca counted her last round and stumbled back-ward, praying that she could do it as fast as David—

• and saw that the third animal was stumbling back, its wide chest gushing thin streamers of red. It collapsed into the puddle of watery fluid it created and stayed there.

Nothing in the tunnel moved, but there were at least two more around the corner. Their wailing cries continued to wax and wane through the tunnel, but they stayed back, out of sight—as if they knew what had happened to their siblings, and were too smart to charge into waiting death.

“Fall back,” David said hoarsely, and still aiming at the blind corner, they started to edge backward, the shrieks of the hybrid creatures rolling over them in lonely, terrible waves.

Griifith moved quickly away from the door when he heard the key in the lock, not wanting to be too close to whomever Alan had brought along. He had Thur-man already standing ready, just in case there were any sudden moves—but when he saw the young man and his passive partner step into the lab, he

doubted he’d have any trouble.

What’s this? A few too many drinks, perhaps? An unseen mortal wound?

Griffith smiled, waiting for him to speak or for the woman to move, his heart full and warm with good humor. It had been so long since he’d talked to someone who could respond without prompting, and the fact that his fine plan had worked made him all the merrier. Behind him, Alan sealed the door and stood blankly, holding two weapons on the unlikely pair.

The young man gazed wide-eyed around the labora-tory, his dark gaze settling on the wide airlock win-dow in something like awe. The woman’s head was down, rolling across her chest.

He had the deep, natural tan of a Hispanic, or perhaps someone from India. Not too tall, but sturdy enough. Yes, he’d do quite nicely . . . and since this might even have been the one to destroy Athens, there was a certain poetic justice being served. - The youth’s darting gaze finally rested on Griffith, curious and not altogether as frightened as Griffith would have liked.

We’ll see about that. . . .

“Where are we?” the young man asked quietly. “You are in a chemical research laboratory, approx-imately twenty meters below the surface of Caliban Cove,” Griffith said. “Interesting, yes? Those clever designers even built it inside of a shipwreck—or they built the shipwreck around the lab, I forget ex—“ “Are you Thurman?”

Such manners!

Griffith smiled again, shaking his head. “No. That fat, hopeless creature standing to your left is Dr. Thurman. I am Nicolas Griffith. And you might be...?”

Before the young man could speak, the woman rolled her head up, a wobbling white face looking around in fixed, helpless hunger.

An infected one!

“Thurman, take the woman and hold her,” Griffith said quickly. He couldn’t have her damaging the fine specimen Alan had managed to catch—

• but as Thurman grabbed for the female, the young man resisted, pushing at Louis with fast, angry hands, a sneer of bravado on his face.

Griffith felt a pulse of distress. “Alan, hit him!” Dr. Kinneson brought his hand up quickly, crack-ing the struggling youth a smart blow across the back of his skull; he stopped fighting just long enough for Thurman to pull the woman away.

“She’s gone,” Griffith said forcefully, wondering why on earth anyone would want to hang on to one of those. “Look at her, can’t you see she’s not human anymore? She’s one of Birkin’s puppets, one of the pathetically altered hungry. A zombie. A Trisquad unit without training.”

Even as Griffith spoke, a fascinating turn of events took place. The woman squirmed around in Thur-man’s grasp—and with one quick movement, darted forward and bit into Louis’s face. She pulled back with a thick, bloody mouthful of his cheek and started to chew enthusiastically.

“Karen, oh my God, no— “

For as upset as he sounded, the young man didn’t move to do anything about it. For that matter, neither did Louis. The doctor stood calmly, blood pouring down his face, watching the T-Virus drone lustily swallow the piece of tender flesh. Griffith was trans-fixed.

“Look at that,” he said softly. “Not a grimace ot pain, not a flutter of emotion .. . smile, Louis!” Thurman grinned even as the woman lunged for-ward again, managing to snag his protruding lower lip. With a wet, tearing sound, the lip ripped away, exposing an even wider grin. Blood gushed. The woman chewed.

Amazing. Absolutely breathtaking.

The young man was quivering, his deep tan under-shot with a sickly pallor. He didn’t seem to appreciate what he was seeing, and Griffith realized that he probably wouldn’t; the woman must have been a friend.

Too bad. Pearls before swine . . .

“Alan, take hold of our young man, and hold him tightly.”

The youth didn’t struggle, too absorbed in the apparent horror that he was experiencing. The female got another piece of cheek, and Louis’s smile wa-vered, probably from muscle trauma.

As much as Griffith wanted to continue watching, there was work to be done. The young man’s other friends might manage to put down the Ma7s—and if they succeeded with that, they might come looking for their bright young man.

But by then, he’ll be my bright young man.... Griffith walked to a counter and picked up a measured syringe, tapping the side of it with one finger. He turned to the silent guest, wondering if he should reveal his brilliant scheme for catching his friends. Wasn’t that what “villains” always did in movies? He considered it only briefly, then decided against it; he’d always considered it a foolish plot point. And he was far from villainous. It was they who had invaded his sanctuary, threatened his plans for creating worldwide peace. There was no question who the evildoers were in this story.

The young Hispanic was still watching the bizarre luncheon, his mouth literally hanging open in dismay;

Karen was swallowing Thurman’s nose, and making quite a mess. He’d have to dispose of her before Louis’s arms gave out, though that gave him plenty of time.

Stepping forward quickly, Griffith jabbed the nee-dle into the youth’s burly arm and depressed the plunger.

Only then did he struggle, his shocked gaze turning to Griffith, his body twisting and flailing. One of Alan’s arms seemed to give a little, but he had a good, tight hold on the fighting Hispanic.

Griffith smiled into his face, shaking his head. “Relax,” he said soothingly. “In just a few moments, you won’t feel a thing.”

Slowly, too slowly, they backed toward the chamber they’d started in, the lizard-creatures following, care-ful not to step into view, screaming their terrible song. John kept thinking of Karen and Steve, led off to God knew where by the Umbrella doc, and wished desper-ately that the monsters would just charge. He felt the moments slipping by, moments that may have already cost Karen her only chance, moments in which Steve might be fighting for his life—

Come on, you stupid shits! We’re right here, free lunch! Come on!

They’d tried yelling, tried firing and stamping their feet, but the creatures wouldn’t take the bait. Once, David had tried to fake them out, the three of them slipping back around a corner—and when the big lizards had skulked through the tunnel after them, they’d jumped back around and started blasting. John got a single round into one of them, and they’d seen that there were only two of the beasts left—but both had gotten to cover before any serious damage had been done, and hadn’t fallen for the ploy again. “Sly bastards,” John snarled for about the twenti-eth time, backing up as quickly as he could. “What the hell are they waiting for?”

Neither Rebecca nor David answered, since they’d already discussed it, talking over the creeping shrieks of the stalking monsters. They were waiting for the three of them to turn around.

After what felt like an eternity of slow motion, of backing through the empty tunnel one sliding step at a time, they heard the distant, familiar sound of the cavernous chamber they’d left—muffled waves and thundering vibrations as background to the echoing howls.

Thank God, thank God, how long? Fifteen, twenty minutes?

“When we get into the open, flank the tunnel,” David said tightly. “I’m going to turn and run, draw them out—“ Rebecca shook her head, her young features pinched with worry. “You’re a better shot than I am, and I can run faster. I should do it.”

They had almost reached the chamber. John shot a glance at David, could see him struggling with the decision—and finally he nodded, sighing. “Right. Run as fast as you can, back for the stairs to the lighthouse. We’ll pick them off as soon as they’re too far along to turn around.”

Rebecca blew out sharply. “Got it. Just say when.” John could feel the change in the air just behind him, the drafts that swirled around the underground chamber fluttering against the back of his neck. An-other step and they were surrounded by open space. John quickly side-stepped, standing between the tunnel they’d just backed out of and the one next to it. He saw David get into position, Rebecca standing perfectly still in the mouth of the passage—

“Go!”

Rebecca spun and ran, sprinting away, and John tensed, Beretta held close to his face, listening for the rising shrieks, the pound of feet—

“Now!” David shouted, and they both swung into the passage, firing.

Crack-crack-crack-crack!

The howling monsters were less than six meters away and the heavy rounds smashed into them, great, bloody holes exploding through their rubbery skin, bone and watery red splattering wildly. The shrieks died beneath the thundering bullets, neither of the reptilian things making it as far as the opening. Two strange bodies fell still, crumpling to the stone floor in ragged heaps.

As soon as they stopped firing, Rebecca came jogging back into the chamber, her cheeks flushed, her

“Let’s go,” David said, and then the three of them were running into the passage that Kinneson had disappeared into, the lost time lending a desperation to their flight.

John finally let the fear slip inside, giving up the angry frustration he’d suffered through their back-ward crawl.

Karen, be okay. Please, don’t let anything have happened to her, Lopez—

The tunnel turned, angled down, the three of them curving with it, terror for their friends and teammates driving them faster. John swore to himself that if they were all right, if there was still time for Karen, if they could all make it out of this alive, he’d give anything. My car, my house, my money, I won’t screw anyone else till I get married, I’ll clean up my act and walk the straight and narrow—

It wasn’t enough, and he didn’t know why anyone would want it—but he’d sacrifice anything, do what-ever it took.

The passage swerved again, still sliding down and they tore around the corner—

• and there was a wide open set of doors, a tiny passage between the outer and inner, a giant and dimly lit room behind it. Steve leaned against the frame, holding his Beretta, his face pale and blank. “Steve! What happened, what—“ David started, but the look on Steve’s face as he turned to watch them approach, the terrible emptiness there, made them all stop in their tracks. Even as his mind searched to deny it, John’s heart filled with a horrible, aching loss.

“Karen’s dead,” Steve said softly, then turned and walked into the room.

SixfEEn

OH, NO... .

Rebecca felt a welling rush of sadness inside as she stared after Steve, John and David both grim and silent beside her. The blank shock on Steve’s face before he’d turned away told them what must have happened.

Poor Karen. And Steve, what must it have been like. ..

They’d found the lab too late. She glanced down at the key card slot next to the door as she stepped into the double seal, feeling a horrible sense of futility at the pointlessness of it all. They’d come to find infor-mation, only to find tests, only for Karen to get infected—and then to turn against Steve even as they’d reached the one chance they might have had to cure her . . .

... but Kinneson. Thurman—

She stepped through the second door, frowning. The laboratory was huge, counters lined with equip-ment, desks piled incredibly high with stacks of paper—but it was the open hatch across from them that first commanded her attention, her gaze immedi-ately drawn to the thick sheet of plexi or reinforced glass set into the thick door.

It was an airlock, the inner door standing open. And behind the second sealed door, past a mesh grate,

the dark waters of the ocean swirled past, bubbles spinning by. The laboratory was underwater. The second thing she noticed was the blood, a thick trail of crimson leading across the concrete floor in splatters and pools, but ending in a sliding smear. Steve must have moved a body—

• so much! God, not Karen’s...

Steve had walked to the airlock and turned, seemed to be waiting for them to cross the room. Rebecca started toward him, her throat tight with sympathy and swelling tears. John and David were right behind her, quiet, looking around the vast room—

• when behind them, the door back into the pas-sage slammed shut.

They spun around, saw Kinneson standing there, holding a tiny semi-automatic, a .25, pointing it at them with no expression on his face.

“Drop your weapons.”

The low, quiet voice was Steve’s.

Rebecca turned again, confused—and saw Steve pointing his Beretta at them, his face as blank as Kinneson’s. Now that she was close enough to the airlock, she saw the body on the grated floor. It was Karen, her white face streaked with blood, a gaping blackness where her left eye had been.

Oh, my God, what’s going on—

David stepped toward him, holding his Beretta loosely, confusion and disbelief in his voice. “Steve, what are you doing? What’s happened?”

“Drop your weapons,” Steve said again. His voice had no emotion at all.

“What did you do to him?!”

John screamed, turned and fired at Kinneson, the round punching neatly through his left temple. Kin-neson crumpled, sagging—

Boom!

The second shot came from Steve’s Beretta, hitting John in the lower back. Blood gushed from the hole and as he staggered halfway around, Rebecca saw the dark fluid trickling from his mouth, the dazed disbe-lief in his eyes—

• and John crashed to the cement, spasming once before he lay motionless. It had all happened in the space of a few seconds.

“Drop your weapons,” Steve said calmly. He pointed his semi at Rebecca.

For a moment, Rebecca could do nothing at all. She stared at Steve in horror, felt tears slipping down her frozen cheeks, unable to comprehend what had hap-pened.

“Disarm,” David said quietly, letting his slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor.

Rebecca dropped the Beretta, the heavy weapon falling from her equally heavy fingers. “Back up,”

Steve said, still aiming at her chest. “Do as he says,” David said, his voice trembling just slightly.

They stepped back slowly, Rebecca unable to take her eyes from Steve’s face, the handsome, boyish face she’d grown to care about. Now it was only a mask, worn by a ...

.. . by a zombie.

They backed into a desk and stopped, watching dully as Steve moved to pick up their weapons, Rebecca’s mind whirling with more than just horror and loss. A zombie that could walk and talk like a man. Like Kinneson. Like Steve.

How? When did this happen?

As Steve stepped away, a pleasant male voice came out of the corner of the room, from behind a desk. “All finished, then? My God, what a Greek tragedy. . . ”

The voice was followed by an appearance. A slen-der, gray-haired man stood up and walked around the desk, moving almost casually to stand by Steve. He was in his mid-fifties, his hair long enough to brush at the collar of his lab coat, his lined face sporting a beaming smile.

“I’ll repeat my instructions for the benefit of our guests,” the man said happily. “If either of them makes any sudden moves, shoot them.”

Rebecca knew who he was immediately, knew that she hadn’t been wrong after all.

“Dr. Griffith,” she said quietly.

Griffith arched an eyebrow, seeming amused. “My reputation precedes me! How did you know?” “I’ve heard about you,” she said coldly. “Or Nic-olas Dunne, anyway.”

His smile froze, then widened again. “All in the past,” he said dismissively, waving one hand in the air. “And you’ll never have a chance to tell anyone about the pleasure of our acquaintance, I’m afraid.” Griffith’s smile faded, his dark blue gaze turning icy. “You people have held me up long enough. I’m tired of this game, so I believe that I’m going to have your nice young man kill you. . . ”

He brightened suddenly, and Rebecca saw the mad-ness flashing in those eyes, the complete break from sanity.

“Now that I think of it, why create even more of a mess? Steve, tell our friends to get into the airlock, if you would be so kind.”

Steve kept his weapon trained on her heart.

“Get into the airlock,” he said calmly. Before David could take a step, Rebecca started talking, fast and deadly serious.

“Was it the T-Virus? Did you use that as a platform for whatever this is? I know you were responsible for the increase in amplification time, but this is some-thing new, this is something that Umbrella doesn’t even know about. It’s a mutagen with an instantane-ous membrane fusion, isn’t it?”

Griffith’s eyes widened. “Steve, wait. . . what do you know about membrane fusion, little girl?” “I know that you’ve perfected it. I know that you’ve managed to create a rapid fuse virion that apparently infects the brain tissue in under an hour—“ “In under ten minutes,” Griffith said, his whole demeanor changing from that of a smiling old man to that of a fanatic, his gaze narrowing with a danger-ously brilliant intensity, his lips drawing tight over clenched teeth.

“These stupid, stupid animals with their ridiculous T-Virus! Birkin may have a mind, but the rest of them &K fools, playing with war games while I’ve created a miracle!”

He turned, gesturing at a row of shining oxygen tanks next to the lab’s entrance. “Do you know what that is, do you know what I’ve managed to synthesize? Peace! Peace and the freedom from choice for all of mankind!”

David felt his heart start to pound viciously, his entire body breaking out in a cold sweat. Griffith was pacing in front of them now, his eyes burning with mad genius.

“There’s enough of my strain, of my creation in those tanks to infect a billion people in less than twenty-four hours! I’ve managed to find the answer, the answer to the pitiful, selfish, and self-important breed that the human race has become—when I give my gift to the wind, the world will become free again, it will be reborn, a simple and beautiful place for every creature, great and small, surviving on instinct alone!”

“You’re insane,” David breathed, knowing that Griffith could kill them, was going to kill them, but unable to stop himself from saying it. “You’re out of your bloody mind!”

This is why my team is dead, why all those people are dead. He wants to turn the world into things like Kinneson. Like Steve.

Griffith snarled at him, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. “And you’re dead. You’re not going to be here when my miracle graces this earth, I, I—deprive you of my gift, both of you! When the sun comes up tomorrow, there will be peace, and neither of you will ever know a second of it!”

He whirled around, pointing at Steve. “Put them in the airlock, now!”

Steve raised the Beretta again, motioning toward the opened hatch, where Karen’s lifeless body lay slumped and bloody on the floor.

He’s out of reach, can’t grab the weapon in time—

“Steve, now! Kill them if they won’t go!” David and Rebecca stepped into the lock, David’s body cold, tensed, he had to do something or the world would be infected by this maniac’s psychotic dream—

Steve slammed the lock closed.

They were trapped.

SEVEnfEEn

GRIFFITH WAS FURIOUS, SHAKING WITH ANger as the airlock door slammed closed. Didn’t they see, didn’t they understand anything but their own

petty, stupid lives?

He stared at the young Steve, the rage spilling out, threatening to drive him insane, to make him vomit, to kill—

“Put that gun in your ugly face and pull the trigger, die, die, just die!”

Steve raised the weapon.

Rebecca screamed, beating her fists helplessly against the thick metal door.

No no no no no—

BOOM!

The thunder of the shot cut her screams off. Steve fell against the base of the hatch, mercifully out of sight.

Already dead, he was already dead, it wasn’t Steve anymore—

“Jesus...” David whispered, and Rebecca looked up, looked straight into Griffith’s wildly petulant gaze through the window—

• and Griffith smiled suddenly, a beaming, trium-phant grin of accomplishment and malicious spite. The raging loss and terror she felt were transformed by the sight of that smile. Rebecca stared into those raving blue eyes and realized that she’d never truly felt hate before. Oh you miserable bastard—

He’d told them of his plan, but at that second, the thought was too big for her to fathom, too vast and insane a tragedy for her to fit her mind around. All she could think of was that he’d killed Karen and John, he’d killed Steve—and she wanted nothing more than to destroy him, to see him lose, to see him suffer and feel pain and—

• and if we don’t do something his madness will be fully realized and we have to stop it, to stop him from dancing on the grave of the world.

Griffith moved to a control panel next to the door and started to press buttons, still smiling. There was a heavy clanking from the grated floor and water started to gurgle in, drawn from the icy black waters of the cove that pressed against the outer hatch. The airlock was just big enough for her and David not to have to stand on Karen’s bloody, twisted body, and already the water was turning red, foaming up from an unseen vent and lapping at their feet, covering Karen’s white fingers. A minute, maybe less....

In the lab, Griffith was leaning against a desk across from them, arms folded smugly, watching. Behind him, a backdrop of death—Kinneson, John, and the gleam-ing steel cylinders filled with Griffith’s evil genius. We have to do something!

Rebecca turned desperately to David, praying that he had some brilliant plan—and saw only resignation and sorrow in his eyes as he stared down at Karen’s corpse, his shoulders slumped with defeat.

“David—“

He looked up at her bleakly, hopelessly. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “All my fault....” Karen’s hands

were already floating, tendrils of short blond hair haloing around her pitiful face. Rebecca grabbed at the latch of the door uselessly, felt its unmoving strength, sealed by Griffith’s controls. Cold water seeped through the canvas of her shoes, over her ankles, the rising smells of salt and darkness and blood frightening her as badly as David’s hope-less whispering drone.

“If I hadn’t been so selfish .. . Rebecca, I’m so sorry, you have to believe that I never meant—“ Terrified, on the edge of hysteria, she grabbed his shoulders roughly, shouting. “Okay, fine, you’re an asshole, but if Griffith releases that virus, millions of people are gonna die!”

For a second, she didn’t think he’d heard her and she felt the water rising, inching up her calves, her heart pounding wildly—and then his dark eyes sharp-ened, losing their glassy sheen. He looked quickly around the tight compartment, and she could see his mind working, see the sharp gaze taking in all of the details. Steel, watertight hatches; a mesh enclosure over the outer door, like a thin shark cage, two feet deep; cold water bubbling, over her knees now, Ka-ren’s arms and head lifting, floating—

“Doors are steel, the window’s two inches of plexi—once the outer hatch pops, there’s the cage—“ He looked into her eyes, his own filled with frustrated anger, with shock and apology—and shook his head. She dropped her hands, her body starting to shiver from the cold, her thoughts delving into black despair. David sloshed closer and put his arms around her. “Just your luck to meet me,” he said softly, rubbing her upper arms as her teeth started to chatter, as the water swirled up around her hips, as Karen’s lifeless hand brushed her leg—

Luck. Karen.

Rebecca’s heart seemed to stop in mid-beat. David held her tightly, wishing a million things, knowing that it was too late for any of them. He glanced into the lab and saw that Griffith was still watching them, still smiling. He looked away, filled with a useless, dismal hatred as the icy water slopped against his hips. Murdering bloody bastard—

Rebecca tensed against his chest suddenly. She pushed away from him and grabbed at Karen’s body, her fingers searching frantically through the dead wom-an’s vest. She laughed, a bright, hysterical snap of

^j°y—

• she’s gone mad—

• and jerked a dark, round object from one of Karen’s pockets. David saw what it was and felt pure amazement sweep through him.

“She carried it for luck,” Rebecca chattered out quickly. “It’s live.”

David took the grenade and held it behind his back, his thoughts racing again, assessing, the water to his waist and almost to Rebecca’s heaving chest.

• outer door pops, pull the pin and get in the cage, hold the hatch closed—

They’d probably still die. But if they could pull it off, they wouldn’t go out alone.

Griffith watched the water rise, watched the two run through a stereotypical melodrama almost absently—his thoughts had already turned to the coming dawn, and the problem of getting the heavy canisters upstairs. He supposed it served him right, losing his temper that way....

The pair were putting on quite a show. The girl, angry at the Brit’s apathy; the quick, desperate look for a way out of then- predicament. The final embrace, then the panic—the girl clutching at the T-Virus drone, the Brit talking at her, frowning, worried for her sanity even as the dark water rose over her young bosom. Sad, so sad. They should never have come, never have tried to, to get at me....

Now the man was holding her up, pathetically working to postpone the inevitable as the water spun up across the glass. Once they were dead, he’d pop the cage, give the Leviathans a treat before setting them free again, free to swim in unmanned seas and live out their days in peace.

Ocean and land as one, his mind murmured dream-ily. Mirrors of simplicity, instinct... The drone body fluttered lazily past the window, and he saw that the two invaders had propped them-selves between the hatches, struggling to hold on to the last bit of air. A determined pair, if thick-headed. It occurred to him

suddenly that he’d never bothered to find out who they were, who had sent them......and it doesn’t

matter now, does it? The lock had filled. The light on the control panel indicated that the outer door had unlatched. It was over—

• except they were scrambling to get out, kicking through into the cage, and something small dropped past the window as they pushed the door closed behind them—

Griffith frowned and—

BOOM!

He just had time to register disbelief before the hatch slammed into his body and the screaming torrent of liquid ice took his breath away.

ElGHfEEn

WHEN THE GRENDADE EXPLODED, EVERYthing happened too fast for Rebecca to think about.

There were only sensations, terror reigning over all. Brilliant light and explosive movement as the door blew outward, hardness against her back that gave way in an instant, lungs screaming, a billion bubbles like bullets, and incredible, impossible pressure that seemed to go on and on in shades of cold and black. Faster than fast, movement and muffled, strange sound.

Dark shapes moved over her feeling mind, blotting out everything in growing flickers of dizziness and her chest was imploding, her lungs eating them-selves. She kicked and kicked and kicked and as her legs started to weaken, the dark flickers swallowing her up—

• air, sweet, wonderful air slapped across her dying face. She drank convulsively, gasping in great, heav-ing gulps of the stuff, still not thinking at all. Her body thought instead, greedily swallowing life, the spray and sting of salt, the warmer, rocking waves, a high, reedy buzz—

CRASH!

A massive wave of pressure pushed her forward, driving water up her nose as buckets of it suddenly rained down on top of her.

Rebecca gasped air, spinning, her mind connected to her body again.

David! What’s—

“Rebecca!” A choked cry, from somewhere in the buzzing dark. The buzz was clearer now, it was— CRASH!

Another surging wave, another torrent pouring over her, seeking to drown her as Griffith had been unable to do, and as the rain fell away, she saw light—thick beams of it piercing the dark, wild surface of the cove. A boat. An engine’s powerful, deepening thrum as it sped toward her over the thrashing sea. “Rebecca!” David’s desperate call, from her left.

“I’m here—“

CRASH!

She could see the explosion this time, see the giant column of water silhouetted against the searching beams of light before the debris-encrusted wave knocked her back, blinding her with a vicious slap of foam. She managed to take a quick gulp of air before the column came down, crashing over her, spattering loudly against the choppy surface.

Depth charges, they’re firing depth charges—

Umbrella?

The boat was less than thirty meters away when the engine suddenly cut out, the lights playing across the water in front of her. There was a splashing move-ment nearby—

• and the lights moved, one of the blindingly bright beams finding David’s exhausted, dripping face a short distance away.

A man’s voice, coming from the boat now moving slowly toward them. “This is Captain Blake of the Philadelphia S.T.A.R.S.! Identify yourself!”

STARS.?

Blake went on, his shout louder as the boat came closer. “The water’s not safe! We’re coming to get you out!”

David called back, his voice clogged and crack-ing. “Trapp, David Trapp, Exeters, and Rebecca Chambers—“ When Blake shouted again, he said the most won-derful, most beautiful words that Rebecca had ever heard.

“Burton sent us to find you! Hang on!”

Barry. Oh, thank God, Barry!

As drained as she was, as spiritually wasted, torn by loss and fear from the long, terrible night, Rebecca had just enough strength to smile.

That’s when she heard the choking groan behind her.

There was darkness, tinged with red and an echo of pain. In that darkness, there was no self and no peace; he was alone and engaged in battle, a furious struggle to find the end to that absence of light. He knew that finding the end quickly was important, but a maze of strange and somehow frightening images blocked his way, insisting that he didn’t need to hurry. A ghost, a soldier, a rage. The ringing laugh of a woman he had known who was no more—and the terrible dead eyes that had taken away the light in an explosion of fire and sound. Eyes that he knew but was afraid to remember....

The maze beckoned him, called to him to explore deeper and give up his search for the end of darkness—that the path would only lead to greater pain—and he’d almost decided to stop fighting, to let the shadows take over when the light found him in an explosive blast of deafening thunder.

Then he was being shot through ice and liquid black, pounded to consciousness by pain—and it was the pain that he focused on in that screaming, terrible ride, the pain that drove him to fight the darkness. His awareness spun away as the air curdled in his lungs and the raging cold numbed the pain—but then he could breathe, and the jagged piece of bobbing wood beneath his clawed fingers told him that there was, in fact, light. He wasn’t dead, although he almost wished he were—he could still hardly breathe, and the pain in his back was exquisite—and then he heard the sound of David’s voice amidst the sloshing cold and felt that life might be worth living, after all. He tried to call out, but all that emerged was an exhausted moan. There was a stab of sharp and blinding light—and then darkness again, but there was a flicker of awareness this time that allowed him to understand what was happening. Pain and move-ment, a feeling of weightless suspension and then hardness against his cheek. Chill and more move-ment, the sound of cloth ripping and paper tearing. Excited voices calling orders, and again, the shriek of torn flesh. When he came around again, he saw a shadow in a S.T.A.R.S. vest bending over him with an IV bag in one hand and a needle in the other. Hope that’s morphine, he tried to say, but again, he only groaned.

A split second later, he saw two pale blurs hovering over him as the S.T.A.R.S. shadow continued to work over him with warm and gentle hands. The blurs were David and Rebecca, eyes circled with dark, hair dripping, faces tired and lost.

“You’re going to be okay, John,” David said softly.

“Just rest now. It’s all over.”

A spreading warmth started to flush through his body, a delicious, sleepy warmth that banished the roar of pain to a distant and faraway land. Just as a friendly darkness came to claim him, he looked into David’s eyes and managed to rasp out what he sud-denly wanted to say more than anything. It took great effort, but it had to be said.

“You two look like somethin’ a coyote ate and shit off a cliff,” he mumbled. “Seriously . . ” John was followed into the healing blackness by the sweet sound of laughter.

The middle-aged S.T.A.R.S. medic had taken John inside the small cabin on the thirty-foot boat, coming out only once to tell them that everything looked all right. Two broken ribs, some deep tissue trauma and a punctured lung, but they’d managed to patch him up well enough to call him stable and he was resting comfortably. A medevac helicopter had already been radioed for and would be arriving soon, and the medic seemed confident that John would manage a full recovery. David had wept a little at the news, and not been a bit ashamed.

They sat in the back of the boat, huddled under a scratchy wool blanket as Blake and his team contin-ued to set charges, powering easily back and forth across the cove. The Pennsylvania team had

already brought up four of the giant creatures before they’d seen the explosive burst of air and debris that had come up from the lab, and it was starting to look as though there weren’t any more.

David had one arm around Rebecca, the girl lean-ing against his chest as the black sky gradually started to shade to a deep, ethereal blue. Neither of them spoke, too tired to do more than watch the team work, dropping charges and searching the results, back and forth and back again. Blake had promised to send divers down for Griffith’s tanks as soon as the cove was clear and John had been picked up. There were two wetsuits already laid out on the bow’s deck, a young Alpha, whose name David had forgotten,

prep-ping them with studied intensity. He reminded David of Steve a little bit_Somehow, the thought

of Steve didn’t bring the kind of pain that David expected it would. It hurt, it hurt like hell—Karen and Steve, gone—but when he thought of what they had managed to stop, what they had been a part of...

... it wasn’t all for nothing. We stopped Griffith’s insanity, stopped him from effectively killing millions of innocent people. God, they would have been so proud. . . .

The pain was bad, but the guilt wasn’t as devastat-ing as he’d feared it would be. His responsibility in their deaths was something he knew he’d have to ponder for a long time to come—but he thought that there was a good chance that he’d be able to find a way to come to terms with it eventually. He wasn’t sure how, but the tears he’d been able to shed over John had struck him as a step in the right direction. David’s tired thoughts turned to Umbrella, to what role they’d played in Griffith’s madness. While they surely hadn’t meant for their researcher to go mad, they had created the circumstances that allowed it to happen; their complete disregard for human life could only have been encouragement for someone like Grif-fith. And without Umbrella, the scientist would never have had access to the T-Virus. .. .

Someday soon, they’ll be held accountable for what they’ve done. Not today or tomorrow, but soon. . .

. Perhaps Trent would help them again. Perhaps Barry and Jill and Chris would uncover more in Raccoon. Perhaps—

Rebecca curled closer against him, her breath warm and even against his drying clothes, and David let the thoughts go for the time being, content to simply sit and not think at all. He was very, very tired. As the first rays of the sun slipped over the horizon, Blake pronounced the waters clean, though neither David nor Rebecca heard him; both had fallen into a deep and dreamless sleep beneath the twilight of the coming day.

EPILOGUE

THE MEETING ROOM WAS A STUDY IN QUIET but unpretentious elegance. Three men sat at the stately oak table, a fourth standing by the window and staring out thoughtfully at the hazy morning sky. The man at the window could see the others reflected in the glass, though doubted that they noticed his careful scrutiny; for as sharp as they were politically, they tended to be fairly dull about watching what went on around them. After the phone conference, the man who always wore blue spoke first, directly addressing the elderly man with the groomed mustache.

“Do we need to discuss the ramifications of this?”

Blue asked.

Mustache sighed. “I believe the report covered them,” he said airily.

The tea drinker broke in, setting his cup down with a rattle. Steaming liquid slopped over the sides, distorting the tiny umbrella design that adorned the side. “I don’t think it’s a wise idea to underestimate

the magnitude of this . . . difficulty,” Tea said. “Particu-larly not with the current instability factor in develop-ment ” Blue nodded. “I agree. Things like this have a way of getting out of hand. First the secondary in Rac-coon, now the Cove—“ Mustache cut him off with a sharp glance. Blue, properly abashed, cleared his throat, his face red as he struggled to recover.

“That is to say, I believe there should be a more thorough investigation into these matters. Don’t you think so, Mr. Trent?”

The man at the window turned around, wondering how these people had ever managed to get where they were. He didn’t smile, knowing how much it bothered them when he didn’t smile.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to get back to you on that,” Trent said coolly.

Blue nodded quickly. “Of course, take all the time you need. No hurry, gentlemen, am I right?” Without another word, Trent turned and walked out of the room, outwardly as intimidating and precise as they expected him to be, as they wanted him to be. Inside, he wondered how much longer the game could go on.