Chapter 5: Old Friends and New Enemies
As Matthew Ryan and Pedro Acosta stepped through the charcoal door; they could hear the soft click of the door closing behind them. Instinctively, they both made a quick sweep of the room with their gun. It took Pedro's eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the extremely dimly lit hallway. Matt, unaccustomed to the darkness, put on his thermal vision goggles. The hallway was extremely narrow, barely big enough for Pedro and Matt to fit into going down it single filed.
"This walking single filed reminds me of being in kindergarten again," Pedro said over his shoulder, trying to lighten the mood.
"Yeah, I know, what would Umbrella need this small of a hallway for?" Matt said more to himself than Pedro.
The cold resonance of their boots hitting the tile bounced off the walls and made an echoed vibration, muting any other sound in the area. Matt on the other hand would have sworn that he could here shots being fired in the distance. He wondered if Pedro had noticed but decided not to delay themselves by asking questions. The hallway went straight for about 100 or so yards and then suddenly jutted to the left. It was a dead end.
"Hmm. What do you see Matt?" Acosta asked.
Through swirls of different shades of warm and cool colors, Matt obviously saw Pedro in front of him scratching his head in vivid redness. Matt walked passed him, his hands feeling the wall's surface were he suddenly stopped at the far wall. There was a crack on the cool surface as his fingers ran along it vertically.
"Is that an elevator?" Pedro said as he squinted to make anything out in the darkness. An old fashioned elevator was set into stone, making it appear as though it was a part of the wall. It would have gone completely over looked had Pedro not been trained to look for everything and anything. As if on cue, the elevator doors opened.
"Well, down into the mouth of hell we go," Pedro said with a slight chuckle.
Matthew warily stepped onto the rusted elevator cautious of the fact that the cable wire could snap at any minute. There were only two buttons that were set into the elevator: one with an arrow pointing up and one with an arrow pointing down.
"Up or down, Pedro?"
Since they couldn't go any further up, their only option was to go down.
"This isn't the elevator of Willy Wonka's factory." Pedro remarked.
Matthew could almost sense the elevator getting ready to fall with each inch it crawled downward. Matt couldn't help but look down into the dark pit that the elevator was descending in. Pedro had noticed Matt's silence.
"You think the others are alright?"
Pedro hesitated to respond. The thought of the other survivors never crossed his mind and he honestly didn't know whether they were still in one piece.
"I'm sure they're fine." Pedro said. "You worried?"
Matt rolled his eyes. "It's my job to worry."
Finally, the elevator came to a shuddering halt. The elevator let off right into a flickering lit, pure white room. Floor-to-ceiling, test tubes were the 'decorative' centerpiece for the room. There were at least fifteen scattered through out the room. Everything looked like it had been especially taken care of for the most part. The computer devices and the table counters bore shininess as if it were polished for special presentation and the floor was waxed recently, totally spotless hadn't it been for a trail of bloody footprints leading to another room. The whole area looked well in place except that a stack of papers had been scattered onto to the floor beside a desk. The desk was spotless as well and held a small computer and a few personal items of its resident.
"Someone must have been looking for something here." Matt observed as he took off his goggles.
Pedro knelt down and glanced through the papers. "What's a nemesis? It seems to show up in all of these papers." Pedro asked as he sifted through the scattered papers.
Matt kneeled down, and lifted the paper from Pedro's hand.
NEMISIS PROGRAM III
FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2001
TEST SUBJECTS 013-019 ARRIVED TODAY. THEY INCLUDE TWO MALES AND FOUR FEMALES. IN EARLIER STUDIES IT WAS OBSERVED THAT THE MALE TEST SUBJECTS DIDN'T REACT QUITE AS WELL TO THE REANIMATION OF THEIR BODIES. UNLIKE THE OLD NEMISIS PROTOTYPES WERE ONLY ABLE TO FOCUS ON ONE OBJECTIVE, THESE NEW ONES SHOULD BE ABLE TO CARRY ON RATIONAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR AND MUCH OF THEIR MEMORY WILL STAY INTACT. MAKING IT THE PERFECT KILLING MACHINE, ABLE TO COHERENTLY THINK, LISTEN, AND EVEN LEARN.
SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 2001
AFTER ADMINISTERING THE VIRUS TO ALL OF THE TEST SUBJECTS ON FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2001, AN UNEXPECTED SIDE EFFECT HAS OCCURRED. WHEN ADMINISTERING 127 ML OF DOPAMINE AND 177 CC OF THE T-VIRUS THE, CODE NAMED: NEMISIS, DIDN'T MUTATE, BUT RATHER KEPT THEIR SAME FORM..
"Just when it got to the good part." Matt said. The page was burned from an attempt to cover the information up he guessed. "Keep searching these papers. The names of the victims are here somewhere."
But Pedro didn't listen. He stared at the paper in Matt's hand. "Two males and four females." He repeated.
"Yeah."
"Matt, who have you lost that has made you so determined to bring down Umbrella?"
Matt paused. "That doesn't matter anymore."
Pedro scoffed. "Of course it doesn't, but I want to know."
"What does it have to do with anything?"
"Like you said, we're all here for one reason. Maybe these papers are the answer why."
"You don't seriously think that those we look for were captured to be used as."
Pedro nodded. "Test subjec-," He started, but was suddenly cut off.
Just then, a siren blared on from somewhere in the back of the room which startled both men. The lights had shut off and a blinking red light soon took its place. Pedro and Matt simultaneously ran to the back of the room from where the siren was emitting. They arrived in time to see an airlock door begin close tightly. Suddenly, a hand hit the window of the door. It was a man, an expression of terror visibly painted on his face. He was banging furiously.
"Just stay clam we will get you out of there, sir," Matt said as he struggled to find a way to unlock the door.
The man inside the room, Matt determined, had been an Umbrella researcher since he wore a white lab coat and bottle coke glasses. Maybe he knew something that could help them find their friends and family, which is why Matt saw it as top priority to get this man free.
There was a small keypad to the left of the door, meaning that they needed a code to free the man.
"Did you come across any codes in the papers?" Matt said alerting Pedro from his gaze.
"A what?"
"A code, we have to have o." The increased panicking of the man in the room cut off Matt.
The room had begun to fill with green smog, which was being emitted through propane tanks form the ceiling. The man began to panic even more.
"Damn." Matt cursed.
Come on; think harder, Pedro said to himself silently willing his brain to remember any codes.
"Just start putting in anything you read in the paper," Pedro said as he shuffled through papers that were scattered among the desk to the side of the door. Despite his sudden forgetfulness, Pedro knew what it was. He had it on the tip of his tongue.
"Put in NEMISIS," Pedro yelled trying to make himself heard over the siren.
"You sure?! I think we only have one shot at this!"
"Do it!"
As Matt put it in, the siren came to a halt, leaving a ringing in his ears. Fans in the background of the room ventilated the poison gas and quickly regained its original state. Finally, the door swung open releasing the man from his short-term prison.
"Thank you," the man panted, still trying to clear his lungs.
"Who are you?" Pedro wasted no time with chitchat, not wanting to get too close to a suspected enemy.
"I am Dr. Steve O'Neal, head engineer of the bio-weapons division, and in debt to you," he said regaining his composure almost immediately.
"So, you are in charge, what are all of these experiments?" Matt said gesturing to the paper he had read earlier.
"Yes I am in charge, and those experiments are classified," Steve said as if reading off of cue cards.
"Well I think that you might want to start unclassifying them," Pedro said as he brought his gun to face Steve's head.
"Hey, chill out Acosta."
Dr. O'Neal coughed. "You need to put a leash on your pet." He suggested.
"Hey man, fuck you." Pedro remarked.
"Hey!" Matt yelled at Pedro, "What the hell did I say??"
Acosta frowned as he lowered his gun.
"What the hell are these experiments?" Asked again. "And I want answers now."
"Very well." O'Neal said. "The Nemesis III's are a new brand of bio weapon, unlike the older prototypes, these can't be detected without a series of blood tests, and they have all of the strength and power of one of the older Nemesis prototypes which I am sure your friend Matthew Ryan here knows about. They can also blend into their environment and learn, but I wouldn't worry too much about the Nemesis IIIs there are too many other friends for you to play with," Steve said with a menacing tone.
"How do you know who I am?" Matthew said flatly.
"Oh, I think everyone here at Umbrella knows about your little "adventures" at the other locations. Didn't you lose a partner in the middle east?"
Matt said nothing.
O'Neal grinned as he continued. "Well don't be too sad. You might end up seeing him again."
Matt grabbed O'Neal's shirt collar and pushed him against the wall with anger. "How the hell do you know this? Huh? Answer me!"
O'Neal looked at Pedro even though attention should have been toward Matt's grip. "Look's like your friend needs a leash, too, Mr. Acosta."
For some reason, Acosta was now disappointed. He folded is arms against his chest. "I guess he does."
"I suggest you release me before you suffer from a stroke, Matthew Ryan."
Matt hesitated for a moment. This bastard is mocking me, Matt thought.
"Come on, Matt. Let him go."
Regretfully, he did. O'Neal fixed his crumpled collar, dusted himself off and adjusted his glasses. "That's better."
"What is Umbrella planning?" Pedro asked this time with no gun to the head.
"Oh, you'll find out sooner or later. "Without warning, Steve suddenly brought out a small Beretta, and before either of the men could stop him, he shot himself. The dead body collapsed at once to the ground soon forming an enlarging puddle of its own blood. Pedro and Matt stared in silence.
Matt banged his fist hard against the desk. "God dammit! Our only source of information is now lying face down on a heap of his blood! He knew too much!"
"I thought people were killed when they knew too much."
"This is different and you know it!"
"Well, put it this way. The guy had the balls to kill himself."
Matt sighed. "That doesn't help."
"But I try."
Both Pedro and Matt knew better than mourn for the dead in a situation like this, but they both paused for a moment before continuing back up the elevator to regroup with the others. As Pedro turned on his heel to leave, Matt stopped him.
"How much faith do you have in your theory concerning the victims and the experiments? Do you think it could be the ones we're looking for?"
Pedro grinned as he nodded in the affirmative. "Now you're thinking."
As Matthew Ryan and Pedro Acosta stepped through the charcoal door; they could hear the soft click of the door closing behind them. Instinctively, they both made a quick sweep of the room with their gun. It took Pedro's eyes a couple of seconds to adjust to the extremely dimly lit hallway. Matt, unaccustomed to the darkness, put on his thermal vision goggles. The hallway was extremely narrow, barely big enough for Pedro and Matt to fit into going down it single filed.
"This walking single filed reminds me of being in kindergarten again," Pedro said over his shoulder, trying to lighten the mood.
"Yeah, I know, what would Umbrella need this small of a hallway for?" Matt said more to himself than Pedro.
The cold resonance of their boots hitting the tile bounced off the walls and made an echoed vibration, muting any other sound in the area. Matt on the other hand would have sworn that he could here shots being fired in the distance. He wondered if Pedro had noticed but decided not to delay themselves by asking questions. The hallway went straight for about 100 or so yards and then suddenly jutted to the left. It was a dead end.
"Hmm. What do you see Matt?" Acosta asked.
Through swirls of different shades of warm and cool colors, Matt obviously saw Pedro in front of him scratching his head in vivid redness. Matt walked passed him, his hands feeling the wall's surface were he suddenly stopped at the far wall. There was a crack on the cool surface as his fingers ran along it vertically.
"Is that an elevator?" Pedro said as he squinted to make anything out in the darkness. An old fashioned elevator was set into stone, making it appear as though it was a part of the wall. It would have gone completely over looked had Pedro not been trained to look for everything and anything. As if on cue, the elevator doors opened.
"Well, down into the mouth of hell we go," Pedro said with a slight chuckle.
Matthew warily stepped onto the rusted elevator cautious of the fact that the cable wire could snap at any minute. There were only two buttons that were set into the elevator: one with an arrow pointing up and one with an arrow pointing down.
"Up or down, Pedro?"
Since they couldn't go any further up, their only option was to go down.
"This isn't the elevator of Willy Wonka's factory." Pedro remarked.
Matthew could almost sense the elevator getting ready to fall with each inch it crawled downward. Matt couldn't help but look down into the dark pit that the elevator was descending in. Pedro had noticed Matt's silence.
"You think the others are alright?"
Pedro hesitated to respond. The thought of the other survivors never crossed his mind and he honestly didn't know whether they were still in one piece.
"I'm sure they're fine." Pedro said. "You worried?"
Matt rolled his eyes. "It's my job to worry."
Finally, the elevator came to a shuddering halt. The elevator let off right into a flickering lit, pure white room. Floor-to-ceiling, test tubes were the 'decorative' centerpiece for the room. There were at least fifteen scattered through out the room. Everything looked like it had been especially taken care of for the most part. The computer devices and the table counters bore shininess as if it were polished for special presentation and the floor was waxed recently, totally spotless hadn't it been for a trail of bloody footprints leading to another room. The whole area looked well in place except that a stack of papers had been scattered onto to the floor beside a desk. The desk was spotless as well and held a small computer and a few personal items of its resident.
"Someone must have been looking for something here." Matt observed as he took off his goggles.
Pedro knelt down and glanced through the papers. "What's a nemesis? It seems to show up in all of these papers." Pedro asked as he sifted through the scattered papers.
Matt kneeled down, and lifted the paper from Pedro's hand.
NEMISIS PROGRAM III
FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2001
TEST SUBJECTS 013-019 ARRIVED TODAY. THEY INCLUDE TWO MALES AND FOUR FEMALES. IN EARLIER STUDIES IT WAS OBSERVED THAT THE MALE TEST SUBJECTS DIDN'T REACT QUITE AS WELL TO THE REANIMATION OF THEIR BODIES. UNLIKE THE OLD NEMISIS PROTOTYPES WERE ONLY ABLE TO FOCUS ON ONE OBJECTIVE, THESE NEW ONES SHOULD BE ABLE TO CARRY ON RATIONAL THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR AND MUCH OF THEIR MEMORY WILL STAY INTACT. MAKING IT THE PERFECT KILLING MACHINE, ABLE TO COHERENTLY THINK, LISTEN, AND EVEN LEARN.
SUNDAY, JUNE 17, 2001
AFTER ADMINISTERING THE VIRUS TO ALL OF THE TEST SUBJECTS ON FRIDAY, JUNE 15, 2001, AN UNEXPECTED SIDE EFFECT HAS OCCURRED. WHEN ADMINISTERING 127 ML OF DOPAMINE AND 177 CC OF THE T-VIRUS THE, CODE NAMED: NEMISIS, DIDN'T MUTATE, BUT RATHER KEPT THEIR SAME FORM..
"Just when it got to the good part." Matt said. The page was burned from an attempt to cover the information up he guessed. "Keep searching these papers. The names of the victims are here somewhere."
But Pedro didn't listen. He stared at the paper in Matt's hand. "Two males and four females." He repeated.
"Yeah."
"Matt, who have you lost that has made you so determined to bring down Umbrella?"
Matt paused. "That doesn't matter anymore."
Pedro scoffed. "Of course it doesn't, but I want to know."
"What does it have to do with anything?"
"Like you said, we're all here for one reason. Maybe these papers are the answer why."
"You don't seriously think that those we look for were captured to be used as."
Pedro nodded. "Test subjec-," He started, but was suddenly cut off.
Just then, a siren blared on from somewhere in the back of the room which startled both men. The lights had shut off and a blinking red light soon took its place. Pedro and Matt simultaneously ran to the back of the room from where the siren was emitting. They arrived in time to see an airlock door begin close tightly. Suddenly, a hand hit the window of the door. It was a man, an expression of terror visibly painted on his face. He was banging furiously.
"Just stay clam we will get you out of there, sir," Matt said as he struggled to find a way to unlock the door.
The man inside the room, Matt determined, had been an Umbrella researcher since he wore a white lab coat and bottle coke glasses. Maybe he knew something that could help them find their friends and family, which is why Matt saw it as top priority to get this man free.
There was a small keypad to the left of the door, meaning that they needed a code to free the man.
"Did you come across any codes in the papers?" Matt said alerting Pedro from his gaze.
"A what?"
"A code, we have to have o." The increased panicking of the man in the room cut off Matt.
The room had begun to fill with green smog, which was being emitted through propane tanks form the ceiling. The man began to panic even more.
"Damn." Matt cursed.
Come on; think harder, Pedro said to himself silently willing his brain to remember any codes.
"Just start putting in anything you read in the paper," Pedro said as he shuffled through papers that were scattered among the desk to the side of the door. Despite his sudden forgetfulness, Pedro knew what it was. He had it on the tip of his tongue.
"Put in NEMISIS," Pedro yelled trying to make himself heard over the siren.
"You sure?! I think we only have one shot at this!"
"Do it!"
As Matt put it in, the siren came to a halt, leaving a ringing in his ears. Fans in the background of the room ventilated the poison gas and quickly regained its original state. Finally, the door swung open releasing the man from his short-term prison.
"Thank you," the man panted, still trying to clear his lungs.
"Who are you?" Pedro wasted no time with chitchat, not wanting to get too close to a suspected enemy.
"I am Dr. Steve O'Neal, head engineer of the bio-weapons division, and in debt to you," he said regaining his composure almost immediately.
"So, you are in charge, what are all of these experiments?" Matt said gesturing to the paper he had read earlier.
"Yes I am in charge, and those experiments are classified," Steve said as if reading off of cue cards.
"Well I think that you might want to start unclassifying them," Pedro said as he brought his gun to face Steve's head.
"Hey, chill out Acosta."
Dr. O'Neal coughed. "You need to put a leash on your pet." He suggested.
"Hey man, fuck you." Pedro remarked.
"Hey!" Matt yelled at Pedro, "What the hell did I say??"
Acosta frowned as he lowered his gun.
"What the hell are these experiments?" Asked again. "And I want answers now."
"Very well." O'Neal said. "The Nemesis III's are a new brand of bio weapon, unlike the older prototypes, these can't be detected without a series of blood tests, and they have all of the strength and power of one of the older Nemesis prototypes which I am sure your friend Matthew Ryan here knows about. They can also blend into their environment and learn, but I wouldn't worry too much about the Nemesis IIIs there are too many other friends for you to play with," Steve said with a menacing tone.
"How do you know who I am?" Matthew said flatly.
"Oh, I think everyone here at Umbrella knows about your little "adventures" at the other locations. Didn't you lose a partner in the middle east?"
Matt said nothing.
O'Neal grinned as he continued. "Well don't be too sad. You might end up seeing him again."
Matt grabbed O'Neal's shirt collar and pushed him against the wall with anger. "How the hell do you know this? Huh? Answer me!"
O'Neal looked at Pedro even though attention should have been toward Matt's grip. "Look's like your friend needs a leash, too, Mr. Acosta."
For some reason, Acosta was now disappointed. He folded is arms against his chest. "I guess he does."
"I suggest you release me before you suffer from a stroke, Matthew Ryan."
Matt hesitated for a moment. This bastard is mocking me, Matt thought.
"Come on, Matt. Let him go."
Regretfully, he did. O'Neal fixed his crumpled collar, dusted himself off and adjusted his glasses. "That's better."
"What is Umbrella planning?" Pedro asked this time with no gun to the head.
"Oh, you'll find out sooner or later. "Without warning, Steve suddenly brought out a small Beretta, and before either of the men could stop him, he shot himself. The dead body collapsed at once to the ground soon forming an enlarging puddle of its own blood. Pedro and Matt stared in silence.
Matt banged his fist hard against the desk. "God dammit! Our only source of information is now lying face down on a heap of his blood! He knew too much!"
"I thought people were killed when they knew too much."
"This is different and you know it!"
"Well, put it this way. The guy had the balls to kill himself."
Matt sighed. "That doesn't help."
"But I try."
Both Pedro and Matt knew better than mourn for the dead in a situation like this, but they both paused for a moment before continuing back up the elevator to regroup with the others. As Pedro turned on his heel to leave, Matt stopped him.
"How much faith do you have in your theory concerning the victims and the experiments? Do you think it could be the ones we're looking for?"
Pedro grinned as he nodded in the affirmative. "Now you're thinking."
