Again, everyone nodded. He didn't bother stating
the obvious, that the virus could still be contagious.
They all knew that it was a possibility, though he
planned to have Rebecca address the matter before
the briefing was through.
David looked down at the map and sighed inwardly
before moving on to the next point.
"Point of entry," he said. "If this were an open assault, we could go in by helicopter or just hop the
fence. But if there are still people there and we trigger
an alarm, it's over before we even start. Since we
don't want to risk discovery, our best option is to go
in by boat. We can use one of the rafts from the tanker
operation last year."
Karen piped up, frowning slightly.
"Wouldn't they have an alarm for the pier?"
David touched the map, putting his finger just
below the notched line of the fence, south of the compound. "Actually, I don't recommend using the pier at all. If we go in here, go past the pier ..." He traced upward, running the length of the cove. "... we can get a look at the layout of the entire compound,
and hide the raft in one of the caves beneath the
lighthouse. According to what I read, there's a natural
path from the base of the cliff to the lighthouse itself.
If the path has been blocked, we'll backtrack and
come up with an alternative route."
"Won't the raft attract attention if anyone's outside
watching?" Rebecca asked.
David shook his head. The Exeter S.T.A.R.S. had
used the rafts the previous summer to approach an oil
tanker that had been hijacked by terrorists who had
threatened to spill the cargo unless their demands
were met. It had been a night operation.
"It's black, and has an underwater motor. If we go
in just past dusk, we should be invisible. The other
benefit to this approach is that if the facility looks
unhealthy, we can abort until a later time."
He waited as they thought it over, not wanting to
rush them. They were good soldiers, his team, but this
was a volunteer assignment. If any one of them had
serious doubts, it was better to address them now.
Besides which, he was open to other suggestions.
His gaze fell across Rebecca's youthful face, taking
in the steady willingness of a good S.T.A.R.S. opera-
tive in the quick brown eyes, the thoughtful consider-
ation of his plan. He was beginning to like her, for
more than just her usefulness to the mission. There
was a kind of matter-of-fact openness about her that
appealed to him, particularly with all of his recent
turmoil over emotional awkwardness. She seemed
quite comfortable with herself ...
David pushed the thoughts aside, suddenly realiz-
ing how much stress he'd been under, how tired he
continued to be; his focus was suffering for it.
Keep it together, man. This isn't the time to wander.
"On to specifics," he said. "Once we get inside, we move in a staggered line through the compound,
sticking to shadows. John will take point with Karen
at his back, scouting the area for the lab and looking
for some idea as to what's happened. Steve and
Rebecca will follow, and I'll bring up the rear. When
we find the lab, we go in together. Rebecca will know
what to look for in terms of materials, and if they have
a computer system still running, Steve can get into the
files. The rest of us will provide cover. Once we
retrieve the information, we get back out the way we
came."
He picked up the poem that Trent had given him, tapping it with his other hand. "One of Rebecca's teammates has already had dealings with Mr. Trent.
She thinks that this might be relevant to what we need
to find, so I want all of you to take another look before
we go in. It may be important."
"So we can trust him?" Karen asked. "This Trent's okay?"
David frowned, not sure how to answer. "It seems that for whatever reason, he's on our side in all of this,
yes," he said slowly. "And Rebecca recognized one of the names on the list as a man who has worked with
viruses before. The information looks solid." It wasn't a straight answer, but it would have to do.
"Any idea on what the chances are that we'll
contract the virus?" Steve asked quietly.
David tilted his head toward Rebecca. "If you
could give us some insight about what we may see,
perhaps a bit of background ..."
She nodded, turning toward the rest of the team.
"I can't tell you exactly what we're dealing with. When
our team got kicked off the case, I lost access to the
tissue and saliva samples, so I didn't get to run any
tests. But from looking at the effects, it's pretty
obvious that the T-Virus is a mutagen, altering the
host's chromosome structure on a cellular level. It's
an interspecies infective, capable of amplifying in
plants, mammals, birds, reptiles, you name it. In
some creatures, it promotes incredible growth; in all
of them, violent behavior. From some of the reports
we came across at the estate, I can tell you that it
affects brain chemistry, at least in humans—inducing
something like a schizophrenic psychosis through
extremely high levels of D2 receptors. It also inhibits
pain. The human victims we came across hardly
reacted to gunshot wounds, and though they were
decaying physically, they didn't seem to feel it ..."
The young chemist paused, perhaps remembering.
She suddenly looked much older than her years. "The spill at the estate looked like an airborne, but I don't
think that's its designed or preferred form. The scien-
tists were almost certainly injecting it in conjunction
with genetic experimentation. And since none of us
contracted it and it didn't spread, I don't think we
have to worry about breathing it in. "
"What we do have to watch for is contact with a
host, and I mean any contact, I can't stress that
enough, this thing is incredibly virulent once it
enters the bloodstream, and even a single drop of
blood from a host could hold hundreds of millions of
virus particles. We'd need a fully equipped hot suite
and a trained biohazard virologist to pin down its replication strategy for certain, but direct contact of
any kind should be avoided at all costs. With any
luck, they'll have died by now ... or at least deterio-
rated past mobility. The humans, anyway."
There was a moment of strained silence as they all
considered the implications of what she'd told them.
David could see that they were shaken, and felt a bit
shaken himself. Knowing that the virus was toxic
wasn't the same thing as actually hearing the specifics.
My God, what were those people thinking? How
could they live with themselves, deliberately infecting
anything with something like that?
On the tail of that thought, another occurred to
him: how would he live with himself if one of his team
contracted the virus? He'd led missions before in
which people under his command had been hurt
and twice, before he made captain, he'd been on
operations in which S.T.A.R.S. had been killed. But
taking a team into an area on his own initiative,
where a silent, terrible disease could infect them,
where they could die at the claws of some inhuman
monster...
... it would be on my head. This isn't an authorized
mission, the responsibility stops with me. Can I truly
ask them to do this?
"Well, it pretty much sounds like a shit job," John said finally. "And if we wanna get there on time, we better head out soon." He smiled at David, an un- characteristically subdued one but a smile all the
same. "You know me, I love a good fight. And
somebody's gotta stop these assholes from spreading
this stuff around, right?"
Steve and Karen were both nodding, their faces as
set and determined as John's, and even knowing what
they would encounter, Rebecca had made her deci-
sion back in Raccoon. David felt a sudden rush of
emotion for all of them, a strange, uncomfortable mix
of pride and fear and warmth that he wasn't sure what
to do with.
After a few seconds of uncertain silence, he nodded
briskly, glancing at his watch. It would take them a
few hours to get to the launch site.
"Right," he said. "We'd best get to storage and load up. We can go through the rest of it on our way."
As they stood to leave, David reminded himself
that they were doing this because it was necessary,
that each of them had made up their own mind to
participate in the dangerous operation. They knew
the risks. And he also knew that if anything went
wrong, that knowledge would be cold comfort indeed.
Karen sat in the back of the van and loaded clips, the words of the mysterious message repeating
through her thoughts as she thumbed the nine-
millimeter rounds into each magazine.
. . . Ammon's message received/blue series/enter answer
for key/letters and numbers reverse/time rainbow/don't
count/blue to access.
She finished another clip and set it aside with the
others, absently wiping her oily fingers on the leg of
her pants before picking up the next. A welcome
breeze whispered through the muggy van, smelling of
salt and summer-warmed sea. They'd pulled off the
road south of the cove, finding a clear patch to set up
not a quarter mile from the water's edge. Outside, the
sun was setting, casting long shadows across the dusty
ground. The not-so-distant sound of soft waves
against the shore was soothing, a white noise back-
ground to the low voices of the others as they worked.
Steve and David were propping the raft, while John
checked out the motor. Rebecca was assembling a
medical kit from the supplies they'd "borrowed" out
of the S.T.A.R.S. equipment warehouse.
... the letters and numbers... a code? Does it
relate to time? Does counting relate to the sum of the
lines, or to something else?
Her mind worked the riddle relentlessly, gnawing at
the words the way a dog worries a bone. What did it mean? Were the lines connected to a single concept,
or did each represent a separate aspect of a bigger
puzzle? Had Ammon sent the message, and if he
worked for Umbrella, why?
She finished the last clip and reached for a water-
proof carryall, refocusing herself to the task at hand.
She knew that her thoughts would return to the
strange little poem as soon as she'd completed her
assigned detail. It was the way her mind worked; she
just couldn't relax when presented with an ambiguity.
There was always an answer, always, and finding it
was just a matter of concentration, of taking the right
steps in the right order.
The semi-automatics were cleaned and ready, lay-
ing in a neat line next to the checked radio gear on the
floor of the van. They weren't taking any weapons
besides the S.T.A.R.S.-issued Berettas, David insist-
ing that they needed to travel light. Although Karen
agreed, she was sorry they wouldn't be bringing in the
assault rifles, which were equipped with night scopes.
After hearing more of the details about the zombie-
like creatures on their ride, she didn't know how
comfortable she felt with just a handgun and a
halogen flashlight.
Admit it. You're worried about this one, and have
been since David broke the news. The facts are all out
of order, the pieces don't fit the way they're supposed
to.
It was ironic that the reasons compelling her to
crack this mystery were the same ones that made her
0 Comments