An 11 year old girl was
sitting alone in a bedroom.
It was just like the last summer
vacations in the Rockfort Island house. Big, typical British
decoration, four rooms and a wonderful garden with a swimming pool
and playground.
Except this summer, the girl felt alone.
A tear
rolled down her cheek as she remembered last month's events. Her
life had changed completely.
A month ago, she was giggling,
watching cartoons on TV, while getting ready for school. She was
happy.
As she came down to eat breakfast, she saw the person she
most loved, her father looked at her and smiled. She felt warm
inside.
Both giggled till the school bus arrived. With a kiss they
said goodbye.
Then it all began.
About half an hour after
classes started, two men went to get her. She recognized the Umbrella
uniforms.
Wondering what had happened, she followed them.
The
car crash came back to her memory.
The school.
The City
Hall.
The girl tried to clear her mind from these memories. She
wasn't happy anymore.
Her father was taken from her. Shot dead.
Or undead.
Tears were now too many.
Reaching for a tissue,
Angela Ashford cleaned her eyes, gave a soft kiss on a picture of her
father and made her way downstairs, to the kitchen.
When she got
to the kitchen, she realised she wasn't alone.
J- Prospero.
Alice was there in the sitting by the table, right in the middle of
the kitchen.
Angela, Jill, Carlos and L.J. had rescued her from
the Rockfort Island's Umbrella Corporation Facilities a week
ago.
Then they settled in Angie's and her father's house for
Summer Vacations.
Angie stayed with her father's room, Alice and
Jill with Angie's room and Carlos and LJ with the remaining two
guest rooms.
They had lived in Rockfort Island before and then
moved to Raccoon City.
Alice was the only one in the kitchen when
Angie got there. The girl felt rage towards her.
If she fighted
the Nemesis the first time they told her, Angie would still have her
father.
Yet Angie couldn't blame her. Every bit of rage would
vanish seconds later.
Alice had gone through a lot this last
month.
- I'm glad you understand – Alice muttered.
She
knew what Angie was thinking. The girl felt weird.
The only one
with who she was used to communicate "that" way was dead.
Since
the moment she and her father were not the only ones infected,
Angie's head felt like being constantly in a rollercoaster.
The
T- Virus.
What saved her life. What destroyed her life.
Powerful
enough to create an unbreakable bond between minds.
Powerful
enough to regenerate the body.
Powerful enough to make dreams come
true.
Powerful enough to kill millions in one day, with a single
little bottle.
Someone joined Angie and Alice. Carlos Oliveira was
tall, strong and handsome. He and Angie had developed a friendship
based on trust.
- Are you ready? – He asked Alice
- Yes –
She answered, walking towards him
- We should go, the sooner the
better.
- Where are the others?
- Outside. Waiting.
- OK!
Let's go!
Angie took a glimpse of Alice's weapons. A pair of Uzis and a shotgun. It went well with Alice's black pants and t-shirt.
- Will you be alright? – Asked Carlos to Angie
-
Yes – She answered – I'll try to hack the system from here...
-
OK... we wont take long.
Angie nodded back.
Carlos, Alice,
Jill and L.J. were going to infiltrate Umbrella, go to the Files Room
and try to find anything that might contribute to bring the
Corporation down.
Jill and Carlos had been planning this for
weeks.
Meanwhile Angie would log in Umbrella's Internet System
from one of her father's laptop. She just needed to find na illegal
operation. One flaw by Umbrella and it would make people start
doubting about Umbrella.
Angie followed them to the front door.
She noticed they were all dressed in black. Just like the spy's
movies.
After watching them leave, Angie goes back to the kitchen
and prepares a sandwich and a glass of orange juice and takes them
upstairs to her room. Her father's room.
Angie took a quick
shower and dressed a pair of blue shorts and a white t-shirt.
Eating
the rest of her sandwich on her way down, she left the glass in the
kitchen and headed to her father's office.
It was a big room.
There was a big couch in front of a TV, near the wall in the left.
Angie normally spent her time watching TV lying in that couch, while
her dad was checking the Hive. Then they'd both go to the pool, or
spend the rest of the afternoon watching movies.
Angie walked
towards the desk. It looked very clean. There was no paper on it,
which Angie thought weird since she was used to see enormous piles of
reports in her father's desk back in Raccoon.
The sunlight
coming from the huge window behind the desk illuminated the whole
room, giving it even more a look of a British house.
Angie opened
the laptop that was on top of the table, sat on her father's chair
and turned it on.
The only person Dr. Ashford trusted completely
was his daughter Angela.
He had given her his password that she
could only use in case of emergency.
Angie couldn't think of a
better time to use it than now.
After she inserted the password, a
Control Panel, with the Umbrella logo, popped up.
- Welcome Dr.
Ashford.
- Your last visit was on: July 10th
- You have unread
e-mails
Angie decided to go to the inbox. Maybe she could find anything.
June 21st - Valentine and Oliveira wanted by Police
-- NEWS
June 20th - Umbrella claims Valentine and Oliveira are
"liars" -- NEWS
June 19th - Video tape shows last hours in
Raccoon -- NEWS
June 18th - Valentine and Oliveira accuse Umbrella
-- NEWS
June 16th - Please Answer -- William Birkin
June 14th -
Are you OK? -- William Birkin
June 13th - Explosion in Raccoon
City kills millions -- NEWS
The e-mails started with the
news of the explosion. The day after it happened.
Angie knew
everything about them. She had been listening to the news everyday.
She was completely disgusted at them. She never liked the news. Angie
remembered telling to her father they were boring and that he could
be doing better stuff like playing with her.
Her eyes fixed in two
e-mails.
William Birkin was her father's best friend. They had
known each other since they were in school. After Angie, Birkin was
the person Ashford trusted more.
Angie opened his 1st
e-mail:
Please tell me you and Angie are ok.
I've
just heard what happened. It's hard to believe.
Where
are you?
Angie felt terribly sorry for Birkin. He might
now know her father's terrible fate. But he was clueless that she
was still alive.
There were no more e-mails.
Angie went back to
the main page of the Control Panel.
Looking at all the links and
options, she found one that said "Logs". Angie clicked.
A list
of her father's 10 last logs appeared in front of her.
1-
Inbox x4
2- Access Umbrella Corporation Files – Top Secret –
Sep. '98
3- Umbrella Search
4- Access Umbrella Urban
Communication System – Raccoon City
5- CCTV Mode – Raccoon
City
6- Umbrella Personal Locator – TGT: Angela Ashford
7-
Access Red Queen – Access Denied x3
8- Access HIVE – Access
Revoked x2
9- HIVE CCTV Mode – ERROR x3
10- Access Red Queen
– Daily Security System Update
Angela clicked on the 2nd log.
- Thanks daddy...
Angela went to his logs
with the thought that there would be about 20 logs... when she saw
only 10 she never thought she'd actually find something.
A
window opened:
ACCESS DENIED
PLEASE INSERT AUTHORISATION CODE
Angie didn't know any authorisation
code.
She tried her dad's password.
ACCESS DENIED – Try Again
Feeling frustrated, Angie went back to the
Control Panel.
She typed "top secret genetic" in the search
bar.
18 results showed up.
Feeling happier, Angie clicked in
the first link.
It also needed an authorisation code.
She tried
the other 17 links.
All of them needed the code.
Angie didn't
know what to do. Those three words she wrote on the search barr had
to be in whatever she was looking for. None of the results could be
read without an authorisation code. Angie felt frustrated. Where the
hell would she find that code?
Back to the Control Panel's main
page Angie stared at the available links again.
She saw the
Umbrella Messenger.
She clicked to open it ,but suddenly realising
that there could be someone online who might think strange to see the
late Dr. Ashford log on to the messenger, Angie chose to "enter as
offline".
There were some people online. William Birkin was
among them.
Holding back the desire of talking with Birkin, Angie
goes out of the messenger.
She stood there staring at the screen
for a while.
Then she started to open the drawers. Papers, papers
and more papers. Nothing that might interest her.
All the reports
were in Raccoon. So they didn't exist anymore.
Angie closed the
laptop and ran out of the office towards her father's room.
As
she entered the bedroom, she noticed something was different.
The
desk contents were on the floor.
But it was impossible, she
thought. Angie was the only one who used that room.
Angie started
to feel scared. She glanced at the windows. They were all closed. She
thought if someone had been here she would have heard noise. She
didn't hear anything.
- Is anybody there?
No one
answered.
What if someone was in the house that precise
moment?
Frightened, the girl looked under the bed, in the
bathroom, behind the curtains and inside the closet.
No one was
there.
Angie made way to the bedroom door and stared at the
stairs.
Feeling unsafe, she locks herself in the room, sits in her
father's bed and waits till Alice and the others return.
