she hadn't been wrong after all.
"Dr. Griffith," she said quietly.
Griffith arched an eyebrow, seeming amused. "My reputation precedes me! How did you know?"
"I've heard about you," she said coldly. "Or Nic- olas Dunne, anyway."
His smile froze, then widened again. "All in the past," he said dismissively, waving one hand in the air. "And you'll never have a chance to tell anyone about the pleasure of our acquaintance, I'm afraid."
Griffith's smile faded, his dark blue gaze turning
icy. "You people have held me up long enough. I'm tired of this game, so I believe that I'm going to have
your nice young man kill you. . ."
He brightened suddenly, and Rebecca saw the mad-
ness flashing in those eyes, the complete break from
sanity.
"Now that I think of it, why create even more of a
mess? Steve, tell our friends to get into the airlock, if
you would be so kind."
Steve kept his weapon trained on her heart.
"Get into the airlock," he said calmly.
Before David could take a step, Rebecca started
talking, fast and deadly serious.
"Was it the T-Virus? Did you use that as a platform
for whatever this is? I know you were responsible for
the increase in amplification time, but this is some-
thing new, this is something that Umbrella doesn't
even know about. It's a mutagen with an instantane-
ous membrane fusion, isn't it?"
Griffith's eyes widened. "Steve, wait. . . what do you know about membrane fusion, little girl?"
"I know that you've perfected it. I know that you've
managed to create a rapid fuse virion that apparently
infects the brain tissue in under an hour..."
"In under ten minutes," Griffith said, his whole demeanor changing from that of a smiling old man to
that of a fanatic, his gaze narrowing with a danger-
ously brilliant intensity, his lips drawing tight over
clenched teeth.
"These stupid, stupid animals with their ridiculous
T-Virus! Birkin may have a mind, but the rest of them
&K fools, playing with war games while I've created a
miracle!"
He turned, gesturing at a row of shining oxygen
tanks next to the lab's entrance. "Do you know what that is, do you know what I've managed to synthesize?
Peace! Peace and the freedom from choice for all of
mankind!"
David felt his heart start to pound viciously, his
entire body breaking out in a cold sweat. Griffith was
pacing in front of them now, his eyes burning with
mad genius.
"There's enough of my strain, of my creation in
those tanks to infect a billion people in less than
twenty-four hours! I've managed to find the answer,
the answer to the pitiful, selfish, and self-important
breed that the human race has become - when I give
my gift to the wind, the world will become free again,
it will be reborn, a simple and beautiful place for
every creature, great and small, surviving on instinct
alone!"
"You're insane," David breathed, knowing that Griffith could kill them, was going to kill them, but
unable to stop himself from saying it. "You're out of your bloody mind!"
This is why my team is dead, why all those people
are dead. He wants to turn the world into things like
Kinneson. Like Steve.
Griffith snarled at him, flecks of spittle flying from
his lips. "And you're dead. You're not going to be here when my miracle graces this earth, I, I deprive you
of my gift, both of you! When the sun comes up
tomorrow, there will be peace, and neither of you will
ever know a second of it!"
He whirled around, pointing at Steve. "Put them in the airlock, now!"
Steve raised the Beretta again, motioning toward
the opened hatch, where Karen's lifeless body lay
slumped and bloody on the floor.
He's out of reach, can't grab the weapon in time...
"Steve, now! Kill them if they won't go!"
David and Rebecca stepped into the lock, David's
body cold, tensed, he had to do something or the
world would be infected by this maniac's psychotic
dream...
Steve slammed the lock closed.
They were trapped.
SEVENTEEN
GRIFFITH WAS FURIOUS, SHAKING WITH AN-
ger as the airlock door slammed closed. Didn't they see, didn't they understand anything but their own
petty, stupid lives?
He stared at the young Steve, the rage spilling out,
threatening to drive him insane, to make him vomit,
to kill...
"Put that gun in your ugly face and pull the trigger,
die, die, just die!"
Steve raised the weapon.
Rebecca screamed, beating her fists helplessly
against the thick metal door.
No no no no no
BOOM!
The thunder of the shot cut her screams off. Steve
fell against the base of the hatch, mercifully out of
sight.
Already dead, he was already dead, it wasn't Steve
anymore...
"Jesus..." David whispered, and Rebecca looked up, looked straight into Griffith's wildly petulant gaze
through the window and Griffith smiled suddenly,
a beaming, triumphant grin of accomplishment
and malicious spite. The raging loss
and terror she felt were transformed by the
sight of that smile. Rebecca stared into those raving blue
eyes and realized that she'd never truly felt hate before.
Oh you miserable bastard...
He'd told them of his plan, but at that second, the
thought was too big for her to fathom, too vast and
insane a tragedy for her to fit her mind around. All she
could think of was that he'd killed Karen and John,
he'd killed Steve and she wanted nothing more than
to destroy him, to see him lose, to see him suffer and
feel pain and...
...and if we don't do something his madness will be
fully realized and we have to stop it, to stop him from
dancing on the grave of the world.
Griffith moved to a control panel next to the door and
started to press buttons, still smiling. There was a heavy
clanking from the grated floor and water started to
gurgle in, drawn from the icy black waters of the cove
that pressed against the outer hatch. The airlock was
just big enough for her and David not to have to stand
on Karen's bloody, twisted body, and already the water
was turning red, foaming up from an unseen vent and
lapping at their feet, covering Karen's white fingers.
A minute, maybe less...
In the lab, Griffith was leaning against a desk across
from them, arms folded smugly, watching. Behind him,
a backdrop of death - Kinneson, John, and the gleam-
ing steel cylinders filled with Griffith's evil genius.
We have to do something!
Rebecca turned desperately to David, praying that
he had some brilliant plan and saw only resignation
and sorrow in his eyes as he stared down at Karen's
corpse, his shoulders slumped with defeat.
"David..."
He looked up at her bleakly, hopelessly. "I'm
sorry," he whispered. "All my fault..."
Karen's hands were already floating, tendrils of
short blond hair haloing around her pitiful face.
Rebecca grabbed at the latch of the door uselessly, felt
its unmoving strength, sealed by Griffith's controls.
Cold water seeped through the canvas of her shoes,
over her ankles, the rising smells of salt and darkness
and blood frightening her as badly as David's hope-
less whispering drone.
"If I hadn't been so selfish ... Rebecca, I'm so
sorry, you have to believe that I never meant..."
Terrified, on the edge of hysteria, she grabbed his
shoulders roughly, shouting. "Okay, fine, you're an asshole, but if Griffith releases that virus, millions of
people are gonna die!"
For a second, she didn't think he'd heard her and
she felt the water rising, inching up her calves, her
heart pounding wildly and then his dark eyes sharp-
ened, losing their glassy sheen. He looked quickly
around the tight compartment, and she could see his
mind working, see the sharp gaze taking in all of the
details. Steel, watertight hatches; a mesh enclosure over the outer door, like a thin shark cage, two feet
deep; cold water bubbling, over her knees now, Ka-
ren's arms and head lifting, floating...
"Doors are steel, the window's two inches of
plexi, once the outer hatch pops, there's the cage..."
He looked into her eyes, his own filled with frustrated
anger, with shock and apology and shook his head.
She dropped her hands, her body starting to shiver
from the cold, her thoughts delving into black despair.
David sloshed closer and put his arms around her.
"Just your luck to meet me," he said softly, rubbing her upper arms as her teeth started to chatter, as the
water swirled up around her hips, as Karen's lifeless
hand brushed her leg...
Luck. Karen.
Rebecca's heart seemed to stop in mid-beat.
David held her tightly, wishing a million things,
knowing that it was too late for any of them. He glanced
into the lab and saw that Griffith was still watching
them, still smiling. He looked away, filled with a useless,
dismal hatred as the icy water slopped against his hips.
Murdering bloody bastard...
Rebecca tensed against his chest suddenly. She
pushed away from him and grabbed at Karen's body,
her fingers searching frantically through the dead wom-
an's vest. She laughed, a bright, hysterical snap of joy -
- she's gone mad -
- and jerked a dark, round object from one of
Karen's pockets. David saw what it was and felt pure
amazement sweep through him.
"She carried it for luck," Rebecca chattered out quickly. "It's live."
David took the grenade and held it behind his back,
his thoughts racing again, assessing, the water to his
waist and almost to Rebecca's heaving chest.
- outer door pops, pull the pin and get in the cage,
hold the hatch closed -
They'd probably still die. But if they could pull it
off, they wouldn't go out alone.
Griffith watched the water rise, watched the two
run through a stereotypical melodrama almost
absently - his thoughts had already turned to the
coming dawn, and the problem of getting the heavy
canisters upstairs. He supposed it served him right,
losing his temper that way...
The pair were putting on quite a show. The girl, angry
at the Brit's apathy; the quick, desperate look for a way
out of then- predicament. The final embrace, then the
panic - the girl clutching at the T-Virus drone, the Brit
talking at her, frowning, worried for her sanity even as
the dark water rose over her young bosom.
Sad, so sad. They should never have come, never
have tried to, to get at me...
Now the man was holding her up, pathetically
working to postpone the inevitable as the water spun
up across the glass. Once they were dead, he'd pop the
