what had gone on there.
Karen's right eye itched, distracting her from the
terrible remembrance, drawing her back to the pres-
ent. She rubbed at it, then looked at her watch again.
It had been only twenty minutes since the team had
split, though it felt longer.
There was a sound of a door opening, followed by
David's excited shout through the corridor. He'd
come in through the west entrance.
"Karen, John!"
John grinned at her, and she felt a wave of relief;
David was okay.
"Here! Keep walking!" John called back. "Take a right at the tee!"
His footsteps pounded through the hall. In a few
seconds, he appeared at the comer and jogged toward
them, his face tight with concern.
"Is everything. . ." Karen started to ask, but David cut her off.
"Did you find the laboratory room? Room 101?"
John frowned, his smile fading. "Yeah, it's back the
way you came."
"Did either of you touch anything? Do you have
any cuts, any small wounds that might have come in
contact with anything?"
Their confusion must have shown. David spoke
quickly, looking back and forth between them. "We found a journal, naming it as the room where they
were infecting the Trisquads."
John smiled again. "Well, no shit. We figured that much out in about two seconds."
Karen held out her hands, turning them over for
David to see. "Not a scratch."
David exhaled sharply, his shoulders sagging. "Oh, thank God. I had the worst feeling all the way over that
something had happened. We found the researchers in
block A; Ammon was right, he killed them and our
'he' has a name now. Rebecca seems certain that it's
Nicolas Griffith. He was the one she recognized from
Trent's list, and he has a rather sordid history, she can
fill you in when we regroup. . ." He shook his head, a wavering smile on his lips. "I just ... I suppose I let my imagination run wild for a moment."
John smiled wider. "Jeez, David, I had no idea you cared. Or that you thought we'd be stupid enough to
stick ourselves with dirty needles in a place like
this."
David laughed, a soft, shaky sound. "Please accept my sincerest apologies."
"Where are Steve and Rebecca?" Karen asked. "Probably in the next test area by now. I saw them
safely off to block B before I came here ... did you
find test seven?"
"This way," John said, and as they started down the hall, he began to recount their run-in with the Tri-
squads.
Karen followed, rubbing at the maddening, elusive
itch in her right eye. She must have irritated it with all
of the rubbing, it seemed to be getting worse. And to
top things off, she felt a headache coming on.
She wiped at her eye, sighing inwardly at the timing.
She never got headaches unless she was coming down
with something. The swim in the ocean must have set
her up nicely for a cold and from the building throb
in her head, it was going to be a nasty one.
ELEVEN
AFTER HE'D INSTRUCTED ATHENS AND SENT
him on his way, he'd prepared the syringes and
decided on a place to hide. There was nothing left for
him to do but wait. In spite of his earlier feelings of
confidence, he was nervous now, pacing through the
lab restlessly. What if Athens had forgotten how to load a rifle? What if the enclosure release didn't work,
or the intruders had the firepower to stop the Ma7s?
He'd tried to prepare for every possibility, each plan
unfolding into a backup, but what if everything failed, if all of them fell through?
I'll kill them myself, I'll strangle them with my bare
hands! They will not stop me from doing what must be
done. They can't - not after all I've accomplished, not
after everything I've been through to get to where I
am . . .
For the second time that day, he flashed back to the
takeover of the compound ... the strange, vivid im-
ages of that bright and sunny day less than a month
ago. Instead of blocking the thoughts as he'd done
before, he let them come, inviting them in to re-
mind him of what he was capable of doing when the
need arose. He abruptly stopped pacing and moved to
a chair, collapsing into it and closing his eyes.
A bright and sunny day...
Once he'd realized what had to be done, he'd
planned it for over two weeks, working over each
detail tirelessly until he'd been satisfied that every
variable had been addressed. He'd spent time reading
about the Trisquads and going through the master
logs, memorizing the routine of the facility. He'd
watched the habits of his colleagues, learned their schedules until he could have recited them backward.
He'd stared for hours at the sketches he'd made of
each building, walking through them in his mind a
thousand times. After careful consideration, he chose
a date and several days before, he'd slipped into the
Trisquad processing room and stolen several small
vials of extremely powerful medication.
Kylosynthesine, Mamesidine, Tralphenide - animal
tranquilizers and a synthesized narcotic, some of Um-
brella's finest work. . .
It had only taken him an afternoon to get the mix
the way he'd wanted it, just as he'd hoped. Then he'd
waited, much as he was waiting now. . .
The day before his plan was to unfold, he'd watched
a Trisquad processing and then asked Tom Athens to
come to the lab after dinner to privately discuss some
thoughts he'd had on intensifying the suggestibility
factor. Athens had been only too happy to accept, had
listened eagerly to Griffith's description of the strain
he'd already created - couched in hypothetical terms,
of course - and after a nice, hot cup of laced coffee,
Athens had become the first to experience Griffith's
miracle.
Griffith smiled, remembering those initial glorious
moments, the very first -and truly the most impor-
tant test of the strain's effectiveness. He'd told
Athens that the only voice he could hear was that of
Nicolas Griffith, that all others would be meaningless
Babble and the suggestion had taken as easy as that.
In the early hours of that fateful morning, he'd played
a tape of one of Athens's own lectures for the compli-
ant doctor and the doctor had heard nothing but gibberish.
If it had failed, Griffith would have aborted the
takeover, no one the wiser. He'd had an unfortunate
accident in mind if the strain hadn't worked the way
it was supposed to; Athens's body would have been
found the next day, washed up on the rocky beach.
But the incredible success of his creation had proved
beyond doubt that it was meant to be, that he really
had no choice but to continue. . .
. .. and so, the kitchen. The drops of sedative in the
coffee cups, on the pas tries, injected oh so carefully into
the fruit and dissolved into the milk, the juices . . .
Of the nineteen men and women who lived and
worked in Caliban Cove, only one regularly skipped
breakfast and didn't drink coffee, Kim D'Santo, the
ridiculous young woman who worked with the
T-Virus; Griffith had sent Athens to slit her throat as
she lay sleeping, before the sun came up. . .
. . . and it was a bright and sunny day, cloudless and
clear as they gobbled their breakfasts and swallowed their coffee, walking out into the cool morning air,
collapsing to the ground, many of them not making it
out of the cafeteria before they stumbled and fell, a few
crying out that they 'd been poisoned as the words failed
them and the drugs sent them to sleep.
Griffith frowned, trying to remember what had
happened next. He'd selected Thurman, unable to
resist the petty pleasure of showing the good doctor
what he'd created. Then Alan Kinneson, although he
hadn't given the gift to Alan until later, keeping him
sedated...
He knew the facts: Thurman and Athens had dis-
posed of the workers and piled them in block A. Lyle
Ammon had managed to keep himself hidden for a
time, but had been found by the Trisquads later that
evening. Griffith had eaten a late supper and gone to
bed, waking up early to move papers and software to
the lab. These were facts, things that he knew, but
for some reason, the reality had blurred and he
couldn't actually remember what he had seen, what
had transpired for him the rest of that day.
Griffith searched through his thoughts, concentrat-
ing, but could only find the same hazy and uncertain
images: a blinding mid-day sun, bathing the sleeping
bodies in red. The scream of a gull over the cove,
relentless and wild, calling to the hot wind. A coppery
smell of dirt and, and...
...blood on my hands, on the scalpel that glittered
wet and sharp and plunged into soft, yielding flesh of
faces and bellies and eyes and later, the thundering
crash of waves in the dark and the spool of fishing line
and Amman, Amman, waving...
His eyes snapped open and the nightmare was over.
Shaken, Griffith looked around at the cool, soft light of
the laboratory. He must have dozed off for a moment,
must have. Yes, that was it. He'd fallen asleep and had
a terrible dream.
He looked at the clock, saw that only a few mo-
ments had passed since he'd sent the two doctors out.
He felt a rush of relief, realizing that he hadn't been
asleep for very long, but as the relief ebbed, he felt
the nervousness slip back into his body, jittering and
pulsing anxiety about the intruders that had come to
his facility.
They won't stop me. It's mine.
Griffith stood up and started to pace restlessly, back
and forth, waiting.
The "time rainbow" test, number seven, took only
a moment longer to complete than test number four,
what David had started to think of as the "chess test." John and Karen had shown him to the small table in
the big room, standing behind him as he'd uprighted
the colored tiles and laid them out. Beneath the heap
of nine rainbow-shaded pieces was an elongated in-
dentation, perhaps a foot long and two inches across;
it was clear that just seven of the tiles would fit.
Seven colors in the rainbow, seven tiles. Simple. So
why are there nine of them?
David ordered the pieces by their colors, placing
them in a row beneath the indentation. Each bore a
different letter on the top, inked in black. Red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, indigo and three violet tiles
with three different letters.
"Is it supposed to spell something?" John asked. Going from left to right, the first six tiles read, J F M
A M J.
"Not in English," Karen said mildly.
The three violet pieces were J, M and P.
David sighed. "It's one of those where you have to figure out the next in the series," he said. "Apparently relating to time. Any thoughts?"
John and Karen both stared down at the puzzle,
studying the letters; he wondered if they were as tired
as he was starting to feel. John seemed distinctly less
chipper than usual, and Karen looked fairly wiped
out, her skin pale and gaze somewhat distant.
Of course they're tired, but at least they're making
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