coded, the symbols painted on the cement floor in
front of each one.
All of the red series was on his left, closest to the
door. He saw brightly colored blocks and simple
shapes on the tables in each cubicle as he walked past,
heading for the back of the room. The green series
lined the wall opposite, though he ignored it entirely.
The back wall was marked with blue triangles, the
number four test in the far right corner.
As he neared the back of the room, he heard a faint hum of power coming from the blue test area. There
was a small computer on the table in number two, a
keyboard and headset in three. As promised, the
series was activated - though what they were con-
nected to, he couldn't imagine.
Can't imagine and don't care. Once we solve these
little puzzles, we'll find whatever's been hidden for us
and get out, away from this cemetery. It can't happen
soon enough.
David had seen all he wanted to see of Caliban
Cove. The corpses in the front hall had been bad, but
it was the thoughts that they'd inspired that troubled
him, made him so suddenly eager to get his team out.
The Trisquads were dangerous and deadly, the mon-
ster in the cove's waters had been horrible, but
somewhere in the facility lurked a monster of a
different kind entirely, one that had murdered his
own people and then stacked them like kindling in a
dark place. That kind of insanity chilled him far
worse than the immoral greed of Umbrella, and he
was afraid of what such a man might do to the
handful of soldiers trying to stop him.
We'll find the "material, "probably notes on Umbrel-
la, perhaps on the virus itself and then break for the
fence, get well away from this madness. Let the Feds
handle the rest. If they're smart, they'll blow up the
entire compound and gather the information from the
ashes...
He stopped in front of the last cubicle, returning his
attention to the task at hand. He wasn't sure what he
was expecting to see, but the set up of test number
four surprised him nonetheless. A table and chair,
utilitarian gray metal. On the table was a pad of
paper, a pencil, and an inexpensive chess set, all of the
pieces in place. As he stepped into the cubicle, he saw
that there was a metal plaque set into the surface of
the table, a string of numbers etched into the steel.
David sat in the chair, peering down at the num-
bers.
9-22-3//14-26-9-16-8//7-19-22//8-11-12-7
He frowned, looking up at the chess set and then
back at the numbers. There was nothing else to look
at; that was it. He quickly sorted through the clues of
Ammon's message, wondering which was supposed to
be the answer. Was it, "the letters and numbers
reverse," or "don't count"? Since there didn't seem to
be anything relating to time or a rainbow, it had to be
one of the two...
If the lines are in the same order as the tests, this is
the letter and number reversal. But what letters, there
aren't any ...
David smiled suddenly, shaking his head. The
numbers on the plaque didn't go any higher than 26;
it was a code, and a fairly simple one.
He picked up the pencil and quickly jotted down
the letters of the alphabet, then numbered them
backward; A was 26, B, 25, all the way back to Zed, 1.
Glancing back and forth between the plaque and the
paper, he wrote down the numbers and then started to
decipher the message.
R ... E ... X ... M ...
The final letter was a T, and he stared down at the
sentence, then at the chess board. It seemed that
somebody had a sense of humor.
REX MARKS THE SPOT.
"Rex" was Latin for "king."
White always goes first, so . . .
He reached out and touched the white king. As
soon as his finger contacted the piece, it swiveled in
place, turning around to face the back of the board. At
the same time, there was a soft, musical tone from
overhead. He looked up and saw a tiny speaker set
into the ceiling.
Nothing else happened, no flashing lights or secret
passageways opening up behind the wall. Apparently,
he'd passed.
How anti-climactic.
It seemed like an awfully complicated test for some-
thing as supposedly mindless as a Trisquad zombie,
though perhaps the researchers had been making plans
for something else, something intelligent. . .
It was an unsettling thought, and not one he wanted
to ponder. He stood up and turned toward the front of
the room ...
... just as the door burst open, Rebecca and Steve
hurrying in, wearing matching expressions of fear.
"What is it?"
Rebecca held up a book, talking fast. "We found a journal. It says that the strain of the virus used to
infect the Trisquads is in block D, in room 101.
Maybe everything's fine, but if John and Karen touch
anything that's been contaminated..."
He'd heard enough. "Let's go."
They turned and he strode past them, leading them
back the way they'd come, his thoughts racing. They
had passed an exit on the far side of the building, he
could send Steve and Rebecca to the next block over
while he went to D, just as originally planned, only
much faster, and now carrying the horrible, heavy
fear that two of his people might accidentally uncover
the T-Virus.
It won't happen, they'll be careful, the chances of one of them getting a cut and then touching something
dangerous in a room that's bound to be marked as
some kind of a laboratory...
The reassuring facts did nothing to ease his mind.
They hurried toward the exit, a deepening knot of
dread settling into the pit of David's stomach.
They stood in the bright corridor at the center of D
block, silently listening for a sound that would tell
them David had come. From their position, they
should be able to hear any one of the three external
doors being used. After securing the building and
finding the test room, she and John had chocked open
all of the passages that led to the block's exits.
Karen checked her watch and then rubbed her eyes,
feeling a bit worn out from all of the night's events,
and still sickened by what they'd found in room 101.
Even John seemed unusually subdued, and definitely
quieter than normal. He hadn't cracked a single joke
since they'd walked back to begin their wait.
Maybe he's thinking about the gurneys, fixed with
bloody restraints. Or the syringes. Or the surgical
equipment heaped in the sink ...
They'd found the test room first, a large chamber
filled with little tables, each marked with numbers
between five and eight; Karen had been somewhat
disappointed to see that the blue series number seven
was just a handful of colored tiles with letters on
them, half of them upside down and unreadable. All
the colors corresponded to a rainbow's, though there
were two extra violet tiles in the heaped pile. Since
they couldn't risk messing with it until David had
completed the first test, she'd reluctantly turned away,
suggesting that they check out the rest of the block.
They'd gone through a couple of offices, empty, and
a cluttered coffee room, where they'd found a box of
incredibly moldy donuts and little else. It had been the
chemical lab that had told them the most about what
kind of place Umbrella had created - and although
Karen didn't believe in ghosts, the room had given her
a feeling like nothing she'd ever experienced before; it
was haunted, plain and simple, haunted by the misery
of fear and the cold, nazi-esque precision of scientists
committing atrocities against their fellow man.
"You thinking about that room?" John asked softly. Karen nodded, but didn't say anything. John seemed
to sense her unspoken desire not to talk about it, for
which she was thankful. The weight of her good luck
charm was the only other comfort she felt at the
moment, and she longed to take it out, to feel reassured
by memories of her father and successful missions gone by. Anything to take her mind off the lab room...
The outer door to 101 was clearly marked with a
biohazard symbol and they'd briefly discussed not going
in at all, John arguing against entering a possibly
contaminated environment. Karen had pointed out that
neither of them had any cuts or abrasions, and that they
might find something about the T-Virus to take with
them. The truth was, she couldn't stand to let such an
opportunity pass; she wanted to see what was behind
the closed door, because it was there. Because leaving it
unopened would get under her skin.
John had finally agreed and they'd gone in, stepping
into a small entryway that was draped with sheets of
heavy plastic. There were shower nozzles overhead
and a drain set into the floor; a decon area. A smaller
second door had opened up into the room itself,
leading them into a mad scientist's dream.
Glass, crunching underfoot. A tired smell of anxious
sweat beneath the acrid odor of bleach.
John found the lights and even before the large
room snapped into view, Karen felt her heart start to
pound. There was a dark tension that filled the air, a
sense of foreboding that radiated from the very walls.
It looked like a dozen other lab facilities she'd worked
in; counters and shelves, a couple of metal sinks, a
large, stainless steel refrigeration unit in one corner
with a lock on the handle. And somehow, that was the
worst, that the environment was so familiar, a place
she'd always felt at home.
The few differences were dramatic ones. The room
was dominated by a stainless autopsy table, fitted with
velcro restraints and there were two additional hos-
pital gurneys next to it, likewise fitted. As she walked
over to look at one of them, she saw the dark, dried
stains at either end; the thin pad was soaked with
blood from where a man's ankles and wrists would be.
In the back of the room was a cage the size of a large
walk-in closet, heavy bars surrounding an unpadded
bench. Next to the cage, several slender poles leaned
against the wall, each a meter or so in length and
tipped with hypodermic needles. They were the kinds
of instruments used to drug wild animals, allowing
the person operating them not to get within reach.
Karen looked down at the gurney, lightly touching
the long-dried stain, wondering what kind of person
could have willingly participated in such an experi-
ment. The crust of blood was old, powdery, and filled
her with thoughts of what the victims must have
endured, waiting in the cage, perhaps watching as
some gloved madman injected a toxic, mutating virus
into a helpless human being...
It was a bad place, a place of evil deeds. They'd
both felt it, both been affected by the realization of
0 Comments