Chapter 26
I throw open the Sub-Level 3 door. The only time this lab is ever this dark or empty is at night, when the researchers go to their dorm. I run until I can make out the red light on my cell's card scanner. I cut right. Sleepy light drifts through the portholes. I skid to the nearest one.
Sunlight pierces the 50 or so feet of ocean over the demonstration room's glass dome. A long strip of glass - the observation deck's window - wraps one side just under the dome. Figures move like shadows behind the glass. The 20-something BOW Research members are gathered near the door. In the center of the room, the two guards hold Redfield and Claire at gunpoint.
I start for the door. Distant, heavy footsteps send me backpedaling to the nearest room: the BOW containment area. The place they kept me before Trish convinced Dr. Cabot to give me a cell away from here. Green and red BOWs pace in small, dimly-lit cells behind glass panels. Hunters, big, scaly bipeds with razor-sharp fangs and claws. Skinless Lickers with their brains growing out of their crowns, long tongues like spear-ended whips. When the BOWs see me, some hiss and slash at the glass. Others growl, including the Licker in my old cell.
I take cover behind some boxes near the freezer. The scent of frozen blood mingles with the sour reptile smell. Dick and Dr. Cabot fill the glass door frame. Blood stripes them like tigers. Dick scans his card. The demonstration room doors slide apart. They enter, silhouetted black by the ocean-filtered light. The doors slide shut.
I pad to the far wall control console. One of the guards kept a gun and some shells here somewhere. I rip open compartments until gun metal glints white in the fluorescent light. A magnum, complete with a box of shells. Chambering six, I cram the rest into my jacket pocket.
I scan open the door and sneak to the nearest porthole. Dick and Dr. Cabot step toward the observation deck. The researchers part and back against the circular wall. Claire and Redfield's guards stare, jaws dropped. A woman's voice, amplified by the intercom system, reverberates through the glass.
"Answer us now, Richard! Where is the V prototype? And why are you and that thing covered in blood?" she says.
Dick waves his hand. A bladed tentacle shoots into the card reader, smashing it. People scream. He points to the wall. Another tentacle whips a mic off the intercom box. The tentacle hands the mic to Dick.
He raises it. "Testing one, two, three. Can everyone hear me?"
"Stop screwing around, Richard!" booms a man's voice. "You have exactly five seconds to explain, and it had better be damned good or so help me, I'll -"
"You'll what, Director Steele? In case none of you have noticed, the phones and Internet are down. The door to escape is sealed, and anyone who could open it is dead."
The researchers crowd the door and beat on it. The pounding and their shrieks echo through the corridor.
"You open this door this instant!" yells Conrad Steele.
"Do you remember when you gave Martin clearance to buy the T-Veronica virus sample that HCF was peddling? You'd heard how volatile the virus was - about how it had led to the Ashfords' ruin and the decimation of Umbrella's Antarctic facility. But the power to control BOWs...that interested you and the board and the investors too greatly to pass the opportunity."
"Richard -"
"In fact, that's what led to my employment here. Your choir boy Martin, who'd become so adept at replicating Umbrella's monsters which sold so well at a fraction of the cost that Umbrella charged, needed a grafting specialist. So he reached out to me, his old grad school buddy. He tricked me. And worse, he let me drag my wife with me into this hell."
"We have been over this, Richard," the woman says. "Your wife planned to expose us. You know how we struggle to find usable human test subjects. Martin did the most pragmatic thing."
Dick laughs. "'Pragmatic,' Madam Executive Officer? That bastard murdered my wife - he cut out her organs while she was still alive and then dumped her ashes like she was garbage, all so he could keep pouring resources into his science project, a monster that has no remarkable abilities besides moderately paced regeneration! That needs constant conditioning because it retains its human physique and autonomy! It passively and actively fights its orders! You didn't just kill her, Leila - you killed her for nothing! But Martin didn't die for nothing, did you, Marty?
Dick waves his hand. Dr. Cabot steps forward and stares at the observation deck. Frightened whispers sizzle like electricity.
"Dear God, Richard," Leila Coates says. "What have you done?"
"I did what Marty could not in the whole ten years he spent on Project V: I tamed the T-Veronica virus!"
Dick clenches his fist. Dr. Cabot shrieks and seizes, falling to his knees. His skin melts and browns into a scabby husk. His arms and legs twist into bladed limbs. The four tentacles harden and strike their blades against the floor. Mid-shriek, his face splits in half. Four red eyes pop out. A fang-filled mouth opens between his broken jaw and screeches.
"Marty focused so much on the T-Veronica virus that he forgot about the other viruses and parasites that cretins like you brought into the world. All it took was a Type-2 Plaga fused with raw T-Veronica. When the Plaga bonds with a host's nervous system, that host can control anything infected with the same raw strain of Veronica. It was such a simple solution I'm embarrassed that it took me a decade to think of. For a good rate, HCF was more than happy to obtain a Plaga sample. After I got it, the only thing left was framing Marty. No one on the Viral Research team questioned me when I froze him and told them he was reserved for an upcoming project. Then last week, I got the break-through in my rodent trials that I needed to justify this."
Dick pulls off the bandage. Half of his head is clean-shaven and purple with bruising. Black stitches snake in a circle around his temple.
"Merry early Christmas to me," he says.
"You're insane, Richard," says Steele.
"I might be insane, but at least I know what I am, unlike you disgusting mongrels who sit on high and play your black market games as though you're worth more than the sacks of flesh you are." Dick rounds on the researchers. "And you - you let them. My wife was right when she called me a pathetic coward. I was a pathetic coward, just like you. You all disgust me."
Dick brings down his arm. A bladed limb slashes the two guards. They topple apart in bloody pieces. Dick points at the researchers. They scatter. Dropping to its haunches, the spider monster leaps into a group of people. It rams the wall, smashing them. Blood and flattened flesh hit the floor. Cracks web across the cement. The spider thing pivots. The rest of the researchers run, screaming. The monster swings its legs sword-like. Bodies collapse in gutty pieces. Blood seeps under the door. The screams cease.
Dick points at the observation deck. The thing that was Dr. Cabot launches itself across the room. Puncturing the wall with its blades, it climbs to the glass strip. It smashes the glass and crawls inside. Dark figures run. More people scream. Dr. Cabot slashes, slices, and dices, and they fall apart.
Dr. Cabot crawls out, his front half folded upward. In his front four legs, he clenches an old, blood-spattered man. Dr. Cabot jumps onto the floor and scuttles to Dick.
He tosses the mic. "You dedicated your life to creating monsters, and now you lose your life to one."
"I will not be intimidated by the likes of you," says Steele.
"I don't want to intimidate you - just kill you."
Dick clenches his hand in a tight fist. The four legs tighten, cutting the old man into big, meaty pieces. They fall in a pile.
Silence fills the room. Dick inhales deeply, then turns to Claire and Redfield. They're backed into the wall, aiming the guards' handguns at Dr. Cabot.
"Key players dead, a whole bio-warfare operation destroyed - all in the blink of an eye. An effort that would rival even one of your exploits, Chris."
"I'd never murder a whole facility full of people," Redfield yells.
"Perhaps that's why you've gained so little headway in the fight against bioterrorism. You refuse to fight fire with fire. Unfortunately, you didn't heed my warnings. Now you won't have the chance. Neither of you will."
Smiling, Dick curls his finger. Dr. Cabot raises one blade. The limb stretches until the blade touches Claire's gun and pushes the barrel aside.
I blast the window. The glass shatters on the second shot. I shove the magnum through the porthole and fire again. Spinning, Dr. Cabot runs into the doors. They shutter and bend outward. Blades tear at the metal like tissue.
Scanning open the containment area door, I dash to the control console. I spin every dial. All of the cell panels slide open. Dr. Cabot bursts through the door. Howling, the Hunters and Lickers jump on him. They rip into him, tearing his flesh with their teeth and claws. Dr. Cabot shrieks and flails into the cells. I race into the hallway. Redfield and Claire are standing in the dark blood pool.
"Run!" I yell.
I lead them to Sub-Level 1. Blood has seeped under the observation deck doors and stained the blue carpet black. When we reach the elevator, we take the stairs. I shove open the hangar door. HCF's chopper is still here, the rotors already spinning. The private jets and planes lie in shredded scrap heaps. Trish and the captain stand near the flank. She runs to meet us.
"They can take us to Lima. That's where their next job is," she says to me.
"As long as it isn't here."
I start after Trish, but Claire grabs my arm.
"Can we trust her?" she says.
The stairwell door blows apart. Six big, red eyes and clicking pincers emerge. A long body carried by dozens of bladed legs follows. The tiny jaw drops, and the centipede creature shrieks.
The captain yells, "Shit, fire!"
The mercs rush forward and blast the monster. Screeching again, Dr. Cabot charges the chopper. Trish grabs me and runs as Redfield and Claire tail us. Screams and gunfire reverberate through the hangar.
Trish leads us to a guardrail. Black storm clouds veil the setting sun. Below, waves crash against the rocky cliffside. We follow the guardrail up a long flight of steps and through a wrought iron gate. A gray-stoned building looms over us, its windows like black eyes. In front of the building, a tropical garden grows lush and colorful. A cobblestone path winds through the garden, lit by decorative hanging globes and white Christmas lights. Thunder claps, hard as a punch.
Claire, Redfield, and I follow Trish to a courtyard. Stone benches circle a burbling fountain and marble-etched visitor's map.
"Where exactly are we going?" Claire asks.
Trish checks her phone and then steps onto a bench and peers over the courtyard wall. "Shit."
"What's wrong?" I ask.
"He trashed the comm tower. The comm tower is gone. We have no phone lines, no Internet, no way off the island." Sinking onto the bench, she buries her face in one hand. "Essentially we're screwed. He's going to hunt us until he catches us or we die of dehydration and hunger. And given how small the island is, the former is the more likely of the two."
"He can't catch us as long as we keep moving," says Redfield.
She marches to the map. "You see this handful of buildings? These few gardens? This bridge? The beach? This giant guest house here? It'll take him maybe 24 hours to level all of that."
Claire touches the marble. She traces the numbers listed beside the map grid. "Chris, look at the layout - the coordinates -"
"Holy shit," he says.
"We're in the South Pacific. Near Rockfort Island," I say.
"We're not near Rockfort Island," she says. Lighting splits the dark sky. "We're on it."