Chapter 4
From Out of the Fire…
(ISAACS)
Once he had settled things with the mercenaries, Isaacs ignored them completely. They were trained dogs; barely that and not a thing more.
He examined the bits of the parasite they had exposed, a time intensive job that had taken him nearly three painstaking hours. At the moment, it was still frozen. It had been resourceful on the part of the mercenary to use a nitro grenade. It had slowed the NE and lowered its core temperature enough that the BOW could no longer function. It was, in a sense, hibernating. And that meant it was safe for transport.
The wreckage of the mercenaries' helicopter was still burning, but Isaacs wouldn't have considered it as a candidate for moving the parasite anyway. He needed a controlled environment if he wanted to move the NE without risking damage or escape.
He motioned to one of his own security troops, the one with the enormous radio backpack. The USS personnel were only about half a step above the UBCS mercenaries, but they were what Isaacs had to work with.
"I need to get logging equipment and workers here, plus at least one heavy forklift and excavation equipment" Isaacs said, not looking up. "I'll also require a Harrier jump-jet, or something similar, that can carry a large container at sub-zero temperatures. I'll also need a container meeting these exact dimensions." He thought for a moment, then rattled off the dimensions of the desired rectangular container. "Let me know when they can be here."
"Yes sir" said the security soldier, but Isaacs had already turned and walked away.
He didn't tell the Umbrella rent-a-soldier what the things were for; it was none of the grunt's business. But Isaacs figured it would be obvious to any thinking person what he needed with them.
The logging equipment was to clear out a landing zone for the Harrier. The excavation equipment was for digging open the loading dock of the Hive and recovering the NE. Then the forklift would be used to transport the parasite, inside its container, to the Harrier, which would then convey it to a secure facility.
Isaacs shook his head in disgust. The NE was a formidable creature, and some idiot had been using it as a guard dog. It was sickening.
"Well, we'll come up for a better purpose than that" muttered Isaacs to himself. He hadn't come all the way over from China to take part in cleaning up after that idiot Greene's mess, but he had long sense learned that what he wanted and what Umbrella wanted didn't have to be the same, so long as he knew which one trumped the other.
There was, still, something maliciously poetic about cleaning up after the former head of Hive Research and Development. He and Daniel Greene had been rivals back at the old Umbrella Management Training Center, and Isaacs was more than willing to point out the other man's flaws. That Greene was almost surely dead didn't really bother him.
We'll have to take the parasite out of the States Isaacs thought. Some place secure, but with the right facilities and where the government won't bother us. The labs outside of Paris met those qualifications, and Isaacs immediately began planning: what materials he'd need, who he'd want on his staff.
The NE was durable but directionless on its own. Isaacs decided they'd have to pair it with a suitable host, probably a Tyrant series BOW. That would give it more strength and, depending on how much intelligence was given the Tyrant, allow for a certain degree of free will in how the NE would complete its missions.
We could probably even get away with arming the thing Isaacs thought. Market it as a heavy-duty commando. Designate it as a tank and vehicle buster or some such, use it as a support unit for the lighter BOWs.
Isaacs spent the rest of the day, imagining his NE enhanced Tyrant ravaging its way across the battlefield, spreading terror in its wake. The mercenaries all tended to avoid him. The smile he wore on his face was chilling beyond belief.
(The Forest)
So fixated on the NE parasite, Isaacs didn't notice that another formidable BOW was making its escape from the Hive's rubble.
Oozing out from under pieces of concrete, sliding out from behind ruined cinderblocks, the horde slipped silently away from the Hive. None of the Umbrella personnel noticed, and even if they had, Isaacs would not have bothered trying to collect them. They were a failed experiment, after all. The foolish toys of a deranged old man, nothing more.
But the Arklay Forest reacted differently. The local wildlife (which included a fair number of raccoons) noticed something was off. Some evil was emanating from around the ruined structure. Slowly but surely, a wave of hostility swept across the animals who lived in the area. They became extremely aggressive, attacking anything that had the misfortune to cross their paths. Something had gotten loose in Arklay Forest, and it was spreading.
Animals began to avoid the area. Birds began to abandon their nests, abandoning chicks if they were not mature enough to fly. Foxes and squirrels, along with many other smaller mammals, began to flee their dens. Any who stayed behind joined the steadily growing pack of aggressive creatures.
This motley group of animals included everything from crows to foxes to enormous dogs, which had run away from the City and escaped into the forest. Although it took many hours, the pack soon grew to be over a hundred strong.
By late afternoon on July 24th, the Arklay Forest was an unsafe place to be…