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Outbreak: Chapter Six

Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, Incorporated; Central Offices, New York, New York

Three Hours Later

"Is this true?" A lone, harsh, anger-laden voice shattered the silence that had previously only been interrupted by the persistent drone of the thrumming air-conditioner. "Are you certain that contact has been lost with Neilson City?"

"The Central Planning Commission's lab complex is incommunicado, Sir." The second speaker replied smoothly, coolly; he seemed to be utterly unflappable.

"Then why the hell aren't you and your idiot Operations team doing something about it?!" The first man snapped, whirling around; the long, slender silk tie that hung loosely around his neck flapping like a thin crimson flag. The tie was nearly coming free from the crumpled and ruffled off-white of the shirt that sagged from his narrow shoulders, revealing sallow skin that seemed to have never been exposed to anything but the dull, unnatural lighting of his office.

"With all due respect, Mr. Ashford, we just recently received confirmation of it; it's not only because of the worsening maelstrom that's hovering over the city." He casually, absently pushed the dim, wiry frames of his sunglasses back up to the bridge of his nose; apathetic, taciturn crystals of blue and white stared analytically at the seething man before him.

"'With all due respect,' Noster?! Goddamn it, I just lost contact with the city that I built with what may as well have been my own two hands, and all you can tell me is that?!" Ashford growled furiously, his slender, almost emaciated, body quivering with rage. His graying, tousled hair hung in frayed, limp strands before the smoldering, hateful green of his eyes; he had confined himself to the luxurious, sprawling room for nearly five hours, intently studying the maps and grids labeled with only a single word: 'Neilson.'

"Mr. Ashford, I can assure you that UBCS and our own Black Operations will be deploying within the hour. The main issue complicating these matters is that the storm is disrupting our normal communications link with the surrounding Neilson Guard units. We'll have them on Sat-phone within ten minutes." Noster indifferently rattled-off to his superior, barely making an effort to sound appeasing. Internally, he wondered just how the incompetent, spoiled, impatient man before him had ever inherited the Umbrella Corporation, nepotism aside.

"You'd better have them, Noster, or else it'll be your ass! Damn it, I will not lose this project only a few months after I started it! I built that city, and I won't lose it to any insurgents, or to a goddamn storm!" Ashford nearly screamed, slamming his wiry, frail hands against the chilly, dense surface of the office's paper-strewn desk.

"I understand, Mr. Ashford. Everything will be resolved soon." Noster turned smoothly, only the neatly-tailored back of his characteristic black suit and his short-cropped, red-streaked black hair facing his fuming employer.

"If it's not, Noster, you should know what will happen." Ashford spat, lowering his eyes back to the scattered maps and charts on his disorganized desk. The ineffectual threat elicited a rare smile over his subordinate's darkened face, the concept of his employer killing his most trusted employee seeming to epitomize the absurd.

"Of course, Mr. Ashford; there will be no reason for such rash actions." Noster slowly, languidly closed the dense, highly-glossed oak doors to the palatial accommodations of his boss. He turned slowly, staring up at the large brass door plate, embossed with, 'Alister Ashford.' He studied the self-aggrandizing monument to power with almost childlike curiosity, and then turned back to the expansive, wide, glass-lined corridors of the high-rise.

His lax, deliberate footfalls echoing through the vacant halls were the only sound in a structure that ordinarily was rife with a diverse cacophony of life and noise. On a whim, he stopped before one of the panoramic, diaphanous windows in the grid of perfect, symmetrical panes of glass, gazing distractedly out at the world that seemed detached from the plane of life within the building.

He intently watched the various happenings in the brilliantly-lit city beneath him, and rested his darkly-tanned hands on the chilled, dense glass. He traced the various glittering gems of the neon signs and the broadly-opened windows of luxury apartments with a single fingertip; a smile cracked his icy features, the thought that he, himself, being able to control all of what he saw inciting a swelling sense of pride inside his chest.

"That old fool. He'll never have the power that I've accumulated; he'll never know what it's like to do anything with his life. He just snaps his fingers and his servants give him what's due from daddy's purse. But I, I know what it's like to have power." He mumbled, his mendacious thoughts making the sinister smile expand; it seemed to cover his face with dulled white fangs.

He gazed interestedly down at a single pedestrian, isolating the solitary body out of the hundreds that paced to and fro on the blazing, parched streets that hadn't cooled after the setting of the furious, searing sun. The lithe, slender, agile body weaved in and out of the flood of the masses, the intense black of her hair somehow more overt than the lights flickering on above her; the flowing tresses seemed to draw in the light like a black hole, and they similarly drew his captivation. There was nothing particularly remarkable about her besides that; he didn't even know her. The intent way that she smoothly, effortlessly went against the flowing current of human flesh, however, seemed special to him; it reminded him of that woman, Appolonia, for whom he had left that cassette. Unbeknownst to his superior, he had just returned from the outskirts of Neilson; he had ensured that the storm would prevent immediate contact.

"That woman will be able to hold out for a long time. I have complete faith in that she won't disappoint me. I just hope that she, and that fool Harmon, realize what I've done for them; what I've done for the simpering, idiotic little sycophants in congress that will soon be begging for a part in the HCF 'plan for the future.'" He felt a sense of disappointment as the woman seemingly winked out of existence, her magical, dark hair and swift body disappearing in the inky dark of the distance.

"If only that idiot Ashford knew what I could have done for him. If only he had known what to do with the power that I had offered him. Umbrella opened Pandora's Box, but they couldn't find any of the hope at the bottom. They won't be able to survive this new reign of terror that will erupt in Neilson; it's regrettable that so many will have to be sacrificed, that Neilson will be the sepulcher of unknown thousands." Noster reflected briefly on why he could speak the words, but couldn't truly drum up any genuine remorse or regret.

"Sociopath?" He whispered one of the words that he had heard thrown about, but merely dismissed the overly-clinical term with a languid roll of his broad, muscular shoulders beneath his thin black suit. "Megalomaniac." He affirmed with a slow nod, wondering why people believed that such overriding ambition carried such a negative connotation.

"It's because people are weak," he answered for himself. "People are afraid of power and afraid of the responsibility it brings. They're idiots." He turned away from the excited, buzzing flicker of the garden of radiant neon outside the windows. "I have no reason to feel sad about those people that are about to find their lives crushed for a cause greater than themselves." A slow, needling twinge of nausea erupted in his gut at the words, but he shook his head, quashing the contrite sentiment; he couldn't afford to feel any type of weakness.

A rapid, staccato thunder of his running feet across the hard, unrelenting linoleum floor resonated through the dimly-lit hallway. He scanned the engraved plates tacked to the various doors compulsively as they flashed through his wide eyes, even though he'd already memorized the layout of the sprawling complex many times. It was a calming act, relieving the uncharacteristic flood of emotions that threatened to break through his icy façade. He wanted to be in the form that people expected when he arrived at the gloomy, ominous office marked with only a single word: 'Operations.'

His body continued to dart unchallenged through the winding passages, the lighting growing progressively dimmer and more foreboding. Soon, scattered patrols of ghostly, dark shapes began to flicker in and out of his vision, the armed men not even flinching from their statuesque stances as he sprinted past. His blood pumped fluidly, a throbbing rumble periodically pronouncing itself in his ears as a slow trickle of glittering sweat formed a thin river down his face. Finally slowing, he arrived at the revered room that was shrouded in a veil of secrecy, even to the most senior of Umbrella's staff; the innocuous room held the key to the entire corporation's dominance, its private army, and its assortment of strategic armaments.

It was one of the few realms in the corporate empire's dominion that he respected, and he took great pride in being its lord; he reflected that he may as well have been the most powerful man in America, for not even the president knew just from where the missile that had sealed Raccoon's fate in a cauldron of smoldering nuclear fire had come- he did. He had given the order himself, realizing that the political wrangling had failed; no one could know at that time just who was responsible for the catastrophe.

"This time, it will be different." He muttered to himself, the soft utterance falling only upon the deaf ears of Umbrella's human automatons; the elite guards had sworn their loyalty in blood to him, unable to act on any order but his own.

He fumbled within his damp, warm pockets for the cold, engraved plastic of the personalized keycard, and victoriously withdrew the small, flattened rectangle; he scanned the complete array of data that amounted to little more than a thin fallacy, a shadow fabricated out of the most fragile fabric of human imagination. There was no Trent Noster, thirty-six years of age, educated at Georgetown University, single, blood type O-, Commander of Operations Corps, Umbrella Central Offices. His entire existence was a lie that he'd made out of convenience, someday hoping to find himself in the position that he had now achieved.

He shook his head, sliding the thin object through the pulsating red beam of the card-reader; an affirmative beep indicated that his deception still held true, and the lock released with a swift, gentle click. He reflected that it may as well have been useless to bother remembering the swimming shadows of a past long forgotten, which now only arose in his darkest dreams, when the reality that he had embraced was more real than the truth. He wondered if even he could distinguish between his faux- existence and his true life.

He quickly, purposefully threw open the heavy steel door to the Operations Center, the roaring clatter of the metal against the brick walls jolting the scattered forms of his subordinates from their varying states of rest.

"Commander!" A dark, muscular shadow of black, his face obscured beneath the hanging lip of his beret, snapped to attention. "We're ready for your orders."

"Have you managed to get into contact with Neilson City's Operation Center?" Noster calmly inquired, slowly closing the dense door behind him. He didn't bother to remove the ubiquitous sunglasses, even within the cool, sunless depths of the room, lit only by the flickering computer monitors and the single buzzing, fluorescent computerized map that occupied the center of the wide, cavernous space.

"Yes, Sir. They're just as confused as we are; they've been SOL in reaching the Neilson Central Planning Commission. We have to assume the worst." The man turned to a keyboard, tapping in a rapid series of commands. "As you can see," he pointed to the diagram of the city that flickered to life on the map; an undulating, growing mass of red and orange swirled over the topographical display of Neilson City. "Neilson is now engulfed by a storm unlike anything we've ever seen that far inland. NOAA's got no idea about what caused it, but the Doppler isn't lying, Sir. We think that the central antenna array might've been knocked out of commission by the storm, but that's just about the only theory we've got to go on. And I think it's a damn flimsy one, since it can theoretically survive a small bomb and keep on ticking." He gruffly groaned, shaking his head emphatically.

"Do you have any other leads, Dobson? Any unauthorized flights into the city?" Noster desperately tried to restrain his grin, greatly enjoying giving vague hints to his very competent subordinates about what was happening; it was almost a game, guessing at when they might fit together the pieces.

"Neilson City Airport detected what they thought was a pair of aircraft, but it might've just been some anomaly caused by the storm, since the blips were too small to be helicopters." Dobson rubbed his darkness- shrouded face, a soft rustling of jagged whiskers against a calloused hand cutting into the unnatural noise of the computers.

"Any other ideas, gentlemen?" Noster asked the other anonymous bodies leaning over cluttered desks.

"I dunno, Sir, but the raid idea sounds pretty plausible." Another man chimed in, his voice more youthful than the other speaker. "I mean, after all, they coulda been using the new XR-75 stealth helicopters." The younger man offered with a cheeky grin to Dobson as much as Noster.

"I guess we might have to consider that a possibility, no matter how much I don't like it." Dobson sighed, his fingers clacking sharply on the keyboard as he typed in a new series of commands. This time, the skeletal wire-frame schematic of Neilson's Central Planning Commission occupied the holographic display, the opulent building reduced to a stripped-down husk. "If they did get in, I don't know how they could bypass the security system in the lab. That's the only thing of any value in that building, and, if the alarm's tripped, the doors automatically seal."

"What if it was an inside job?" Noster suggested innocently, smirking internally as he remembered his earlier conversations with Albert Wesker as they plotted the takeover of Umbrella. He had met the blonde man earlier that week in Neilson's outskirts, the two pondering for hours how they would contrive the final destruction of Umbrella's already-tenuous grip on the world market. They had gotten their orders from above: Harmon's plans were deliberately vague, allowing them a large margin for creativity in the execution of his machinations. The two had finally decided on using HCF's own commando force to stage a raid before having the commander, some man named Mueller, release the virus and the specimens. He had not, however, told Wesker about his visit with the huge Russian, Mikhail, and the delivery of his message to Appolonia; he decided that it would just be a little extra for him, another part of his elaborate game that would only serve to provide amusing speculation.

"If it were a raid, that's the only way it could succeed, Sir." Dobson replied, centering the schematic on the lab. "If we-" he was interrupted by a berserk, throbbing klaxon that shattered the relatively relaxed atmosphere.

"Attention: emergency situation in Neilson City. Lab security has been breached; escape of laboratory specimens has been detected. Deployment of UBCS and Umbrella Containment Forces is suggested. Level Four Outbreak Confirmed." A frigid, computerized woman's voice crackled through the speakers.

"Oh, my god. This is unprecedented. How the hell did this happen?!" Dobson growled, his eyes fixed determinedly on his superior's back; Noster could feel the eyes of all others concentrate on him shortly thereafter.

Noster didn't reply to them, but merely whispered to himself amidst the thunderous dyne of the wailing siren, "the time has come; it's begun."