by John Shirley
Expecting to see someone throwing a switch, she readied the automatic pistol, and tensed. But there was no one else to be seen. The room was large, echoingly empty, with a milky glass floor. There was a big red and white logo in the center of that floor— seen from above, it would appear as the shape of an umbrella. The brand was repeated, though smaller, on three of the walls. The fourth was occupied by a floor-to-ceiling window.
She walked over to it and tried to peer out. No good. It was pitch dark out there.
As she moved back across the room, wondering if she’d entered still another trap, the toe of her boot pressed the very center of the umbrella logo in the floor. Something clicked in response. The lights dimmed, and panels in the floor opened up. From them, monitors and a line of high-tech workstations began to rise slowly up out of the floor, humming as they came.
Now that’s interesting…
There were a dozen of them, all around the edge of the room—and at each one was an Umbrella trooper, sitting facing away from her. Alice pointed her Glock at the nearest one—who fell from his chair as soon as his station clicked into place.
But she hadn’t fired.
She stepped closer, looked at him—and saw that the eyepiece of his mask had been penetrated. Blood traced the cracks in the eyepiece. He’d been shot.
They had all been shot—they were all dead.
Then something else was rising from the floor—a rack of guns.
“Pay dirt!” Alice exclaimed.
As soon as it clicked into place she began to pick and choose. She chose an assault rifle as her primary shooter. Then she filled her pockets with extra clips, and strapped on some throwing knives for good measure. Before she was done, she had strapped on as many weapons as she could carry and still move effectively.
Without warning, the monitors on the workstations lit up, all showing the same image—Jill Valentine, glaring into the camera. The sound of her voice filled the room.
“Control, come in! Control, this is Security Chief Valentine! We have an escaped fugitive! I need her location! Control, respond.”
Alice watched the monitor fixedly—but as she did, she was aware of something else.
Someone slipping up behind her. Very quietly.
But…
She spun, snatching a pistol from the hand of a beautiful young Asian woman with short-cropped hair. The newcomer wore a tight red dress slit to the hip, and red spectacles.
The instant Alice grabbed her gun the woman whirled about and—with a precise martial arts strike—kicked the gun from her hand. The pistol spun through the air and in an instant was caught again by the woman in red. She smiled coldly as she pointed it at her target.
But Alice was already in motion. Slipping in under her attacker’s defensive stance, she drew a knife and pressed it to the woman’s throat…
The result was a standoff. The Asian woman in red was pointing a pistol at Alice, and Alice—all in black— had a knife against the woman’s jugular. Gazes locked and weapons gripped tightly in their hands, they glared at each other, neither making a move.
Alice kept it simple.
“Don’t,” she said, eliciting a reply.
“My name is…”
“Ada Wong,” Alice interrupted. “Operative for the Umbrella Corporation and one of Albert Wesker’s top agents.” Contempt twisted her lips. “I know exactly who—and what—you are.” She pressed her blade, fractionally, and a small drop of Ada’s blood trickled down her neck.
Ada didn’t even blink. Nor did she pull the trigger.
“The real question,” Alice said, “is why I shouldn’t just cancel your contract right now.”
“I don’t work for Umbrella anymore.”
Alice shrugged, just slightly.
“I don’t care. She angled her blade, readying it for a quick slash… Then she heard a chillingly familiar male voice. An impossible voice. The voice of a ghost.
“You can kill her if you like. But then you’ll never get out of this place.”
Glancing past Ada, Alice saw the face of Albert Wesker, framed in the monitors. He was wearing shades, as per usual, dressed in black, and grinning with wicked wideness.
“Wesker…” Alice shook her head in wonder. His duplicated faces flashed across the row of monitors.
“How nice to see you again,” he responded pleasantly.
“I killed you!”
Wesker shrugged apologetically.
“A clone.” He smiled. “You didn’t really think I’d put myself in harm’s way, did you?”
Alice looked again at Ada… at the gun in Ada’s hand.
“Now,” Wesker said, “be a good girl and put down the knife.”
“I let you out of that cell,” Ada said. “I led you here. You wouldn’t have made it this far without me.”
“Why would you want to help me?” Alice asked.
“I have my reasons. Let’s just say, for the moment, your interests and mine are in alignment.”
Alice shook her head.
“I’m not going anywhere until I know where we are, and exactly what’s going on here.”
Wesker sighed.
“You are in the prime Umbrella Testing Facility.” He chuckled and added, “The belly of the beast.”
Alice lowered her knife. Ada lowered the gun and stepped back. But each woman kept a wary eye on the other.
“Explain Tokyo,” Alice demanded flatly. “I saw it destroyed.”
Wesker adjusted his shades.
“What you just saw was a detailed re-creation. Nothing more. It goes on for a few city blocks—that’s all.”
“I was outside…”
“Were you?” Ada asked. “Saw the night sky, did you?”
“It was night,” Alice insisted.
“Stars? The moon?” Alice didn’t reply, and Ada added dryly, “I thought not.”
Around the room, a series of monitors flickered, then showed downtown views of Berlin, Tokyo, New York, London, and several other cities she didn’t quite recognize.
“The testing floor,” Wesker said, “is a mile across. Three hundred feet high. The ceiling is black. It’s usually night in there. But isn’t that when the monster comes out, anyway?”
Alice still wasn’t convinced.
“It was raining…”
“Sprinkler system,” Wexler replied, sounding almost bored. “Fitted to the ceiling for climate control. They can even make it snow, if they want to.”
It all began to sink in.
How many mock cities were there, here in this facility? And why?
“Why build such a place?” she asked.
“Simple,” Wesker said. “The Umbrella Corporation derived its primary income from the sale of viral weaponry. Something that’s impossible to test in the real world. So Umbrella re-created the center of New York, simulated an outbreak, then showed the results to the Russians—and sold them the virus. Then they simulated an outbreak in Moscow… and sold it to the Americans. An outbreak in Tokyo…”
“They sell it to the Chinese.”
“An outbreak in China…” Ada added.
Alice nodded.
“They sell to the Japanese.”
“Everyone had to have it,” Wesker said proudly. “The Umbrella Corporation built a new arms race. Only this time it was biological, rather than nuclear. Highly profitable…”
Alice glanced around the control room, a chill tightening her skin as she imagined it. She stared at the doomed cityscapes displayed on the monitors. She hadn’t known about this, back when she was Security Chief of Umbrella. The corporation was notorious for keeping its most secret projects on a “need to know” basis.
Most likely they’d realized she was having doubts about the corporation’s T-virus research.
“And this,” Wesker went on, with a flourish of his hand, “is where it all happened. Umbrella’s greatest investment—their greatest creation. Like I said, the belly of the beast.”
Alice sheathed her knife, drew
a pistol and turned it toward the floor to ceiling window.
“So why don’t we just get the hell out of here?” she said to Ada.
The Asian woman glanced at her watch, and calmly held up her hand.
“Sunup is in less than a minute. Why don’t you just see for yourself?” She nodded toward the window. Alice looked, but still saw nothing but darkness.
Then the first rays of sunlight penetrated the gloom outside. There was something oddly diffuse about the sunlight, as if it were filtered through some translucent medium. It illuminated icy blue mountains—only the mountains were inverted. The sunlight intensified, filtering through the icy blue peaks.
Through the…
“Ice!” Alice gasped. She was seeing the crystalline-blue mountains of floating ice floes. The light spread, and underneath the ice floes lay the great, angular sprawl of the facility, built right into the seabed.
The corporation had built their facility under the Arctic ice pack. As more and more light penetrated the waters, a gigantic concrete and steel bunker became visible. On it was emblazoned the hammer and sickle of the old USSR…
8
Alice gazed for a long moment at the frigid vista coming into view through the filter of ice and seawater, just beyond the wall-window. She shivered. That water would be brutally cold—death wouldn’t be instant, but it would be quick.
They weren’t getting out of here that way…
The glowing ice floes and inverted peaks were fascinating, even beautiful. Shafts of light reticulated, dancing across the murky seabed. A walrus swam past the window, the great beast looking surprisingly graceful. In the distance, she could see the dark undulating mass of a whale.
That hammer and sickle symbol, though faded with time, was still striking in its crimson starkness.
She turned back to Ada and the monitors—where Wesker waited for her reaction.
“Where exactly are we?” Alice asked.
“The Straits of Kamchatka,” he replied smoothly. “Northern Russia. The old Soviet Union built submarine pens here, back in the nineteen-eighties. After the Cold War ended, the Umbrella Corporation expanded them—and built the testing floor.”
So that was it. After she’d lost consciousness off the coast of Los Angeles, they’d brought her here, to an old Soviet base. But where, she wondered, was Wesker? Was he here in this sprawling facility? Or perhaps in some high-tech den under Tokyo? If she found him, and killed him again—would it turn out to be yet another Wesker clone?
How many were there?
“How do we get out?” Alice asked, looking at Ada.
“We cross the test floor,” she replied, her tone uncannily matter-of-fact, “through the submarine pens, then take an elevator to the surface.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not really.” Ada smiled.
“I didn’t think so.”
“But don’t worry… we are going to have a little help.”
“We,” she said. Alice shook her head doubtfully. She had no idea what this woman’s agenda was—still didn’t know why Ada had helped her escape from the interrogation. And who was this “help” she was talking about? Might they end up being just as much Alice’s enemy as the Umbrella troopers?
Sure, I won’t worry, Alice thought. Hell, why should I? Just because this facility is overrun with troopers and well stocked with the Undead?
“Don’t worry.”
Yeah, right.
Two vehicles churned across the snowfield atop a wind-raked ridge. The rectangular tractor-tread vehicles, called Sprytes—bigger than Humvees, and armored— ground their way steadily through the unforgiving expanse of Arctic snow and ice. The Kamchatka Peninsula. A tern flew overhead. Other than that, the only movement was spurts of snow-laden wind.
At last the ungainly vehicles rolled to a halt near the edge of a steep ridge.
Luther West, a tall, good-looking black man with a short-trimmed beard, tugged the fur collar of his military camouflage coat more tightly around him as he climbed out. The wind wasn’t strong, but it was so cold that it felt like being hit in the face with a fist of ice. His breath plumed in the air.
“Damn, it’s cold!” he said. “You know I’m from California, don’t you?”
Luther was addressing Leon Kennedy—a rugged man, mid-thirties, whose stern expression suggested that he had no interest in Luther’s protestations.
“Barry—let’s take a look,” Leon called out.
Barry Burton climbed down from the second vehicle. A professional soldier, with an unlit cigar clamped in his mouth—he was trying to quit but couldn’t quite give it up—he wore a customized .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda on his hip. He brushed roughly past Luther.
“Did it just get colder around her?” Luther asked, trying to make a joke of their attitude.
No response to that, either.
How had he gotten involved with these guys? They’d shared many of the same trials, coming from the prison he and Alice and Chris and the others had used as a fortress against the Undead. He wasn’t a professional gun-toter, but he’d become a pretty good shot. His pro-basketball skills had helped quite a bit.
Could be they thought he was a media whore— resented that for some reason. But none of that mattered now. There weren’t any basketball teams— no TV commercials, no endorsement deals, and sure as hell no superstars. There was little television or internet to speak of, anymore. Instead, there was a burning world overrun by the Undead. And in Hell, everyone was equally damned.
They were joined by Sergei, their Russian technical specialist. Barry led the way to the edge of the cliff where the four men stood, side by side. Far below, at the foot of the ridge, Luther spotted a string of weathered, rust-streaked concrete-and-iron bunkers, part of the last century’s Soviet military installation. Barry grunted, peering at the bunkers through digital binoculars. Luther could hear the chip-enhanced device humming as he adjusted them.
Beyond the rugged ground at the foot of the cliff lay the rocky beach, and the pack ice of the Kamchatka Strait. It was colder here—where they were exposed to the wind off the sea—and Luther had to work at it to keep his teeth from chattering. But he wasn’t about to complain again.
In the distance, he saw the gray hulks of abandoned battleships, and one large carrier, all locked in the ice—part of the old, mothballed Soviet fleet. They seemed like gravestones—forlorn, decaying monuments to another era.
Leon pointed at the three huge vents by the water’s edge.
“There they are.”
Sergei grunted.
“Intake vents for the submarine pens,” he observed.
Barry swept his binoculars over the abandoned facility one last time.
“Looks abandoned.”
“That’s what they want you to think,” Leon observed.
Luther was ready to get moving.
“So what are we waiting for?” he asked. Leon shot him a cutting look. Barry, Leon, and Sergei were a tight unit, used to each other’s rhythms. Luther was odd man out, no matter what he did.
Leon sighed.
“Let’s get something clear right now,” he said in an irritatingly condescending tone of voice. “You’re here as an advisor—nothing more. You know this woman, and that’s your value to me.
“Understand?” he concluded.
And what’s your value to me? Luther thought. But he didn’t say it. He had his own agenda, and he didn’t want to gum it up with arguments. These guys would reunite him with Alice—and maybe the others…
So he just returned Leon’s glare.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Leon growled.
It’s a yes for now, Luther thought.
He turned and walked back to the ice crawlers.
Jill Valentine felt herself drawn back to the empty interrogation cell. It was almost as if she hoped to find the prisoner here again.
She remembered interrogating Alice, remembered slamming her with the sonic torture. She’d had a strange feeling
, then—almost as if she were prolonging the process. Interrogation was the only kind of prisoner contact that Jill was allowed. Yet sometimes she’d felt as if there was something she wanted to say, something she wanted to do. But she wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps tell Alice that she felt sympathy for her.
Maybe tell her, “I can’t control this.”
But all that had come out of Jill’s mouth had been the pre-planned questions. Every time she got close to that vagrant, taunting feeling, a pulse from the scarab muted it, drove it away. Keeping her on task as security chief.
Which was exactly what she needed to be, right now—back on task. There was no place for emotion, for questioning, for intuition, in the life she lived. She was part of Umbrella—part of the great effort, the grand design. That was all that mattered.
So Jill found herself looking down at the scarabshaped mechanism on her chest. Her intimate connection with the corporate masters.
She reached up to touch it… and suddenly drew her hand back.
No. That’s not allowed.
Two masked Umbrella troopers from her squad strode up, and Jill, standing in the open doorway, felt as if she had to say something.
“The lock’s intact,” she noted, peering intently at the doorframe.
“How did she get out?” a female trooper asked.
“She’s obviously getting help from the inside,” Jill snapped impatiently. “We have a traitor in this facility.”
“Central computer seems to be offline, Ma’am,” the other trooper reported. “We have limited surveillance and communications.”
“What about Control?” Jill demanded.
“Still can’t raise them.”
“Well try harder!” she said. “That was my prisoner—I want her back!”
Suddenly a HUD style display appeared, projected directly onto Jill’s eyes by the scarab. Scrolling text filled her vision.
FACILITY COMPROMISED INITIATE LOCKDOWN
At the same moment a masked female trooper pointed her thermal tracking device at the corridor floor outside of the cell. Jill could see the screen—and on it, the outline of Alice’s feet.
“We have residual thermal readings… Looks like she’s at least twenty minutes ahead of us.”
