cage, give the Leviathans a treat before setting them
free again, free to swim in unmanned seas and live out
their days in peace.
Ocean and land as one, his mind murmured dream- ily. Mirrors of simplicity, instinct...
The drone body fluttered lazily past the window,
and he saw that the two invaders had propped them-
selves between the hatches, struggling to hold on to
the last bit of air. A determined pair, if thick-headed.
It occurred to him suddenly that he'd never bothered
to find out who they were, who had sent them ...
... and it doesn't matter now, does it?
The lock had filled. The light on the control panel
indicated that the outer door had unlatched. It was
over -
- except they were scrambling to get out, kicking
through into the cage, and something small dropped
past the window as they pushed the door closed
behind them -
Griffith frowned and...
BOOM!
He just had time to register disbelief before the
hatch slammed into his body and the screaming
torrent of liquid ice took his breath away.
EIGHTEEN
WHEN THE GRENDADE EXPLODED, EVERY-
thing happened too fast for Rebecca to think about.
There were only sensations, terror reigning over all.
Brilliant light and explosive movement as the door
blew outward, hardness against her back that gave
way in an instant, lungs screaming, a billion bubbles
like bullets, and incredible, impossible pressure that
seemed to go on and on in shades of cold and black.
Faster than fast, movement and muffled, strange
sound.
Dark shapes moved over her feeling mind, blotting
out everything in growing flickers of dizziness and
her chest was imploding, her lungs eating them-
selves. She kicked and kicked and kicked and as her
legs started to weaken, the dark flickers swallowing
her up - air, sweet, wonderful air slapped across her dying
face. She drank convulsively, gasping in great, heav-
ing gulps of the stuff, still not thinking at all. Her body
thought instead, greedily swallowing life, the spray
and sting of salt, the warmer, rocking waves, a high,
reedy buzz...
CRASH!
A massive wave of pressure pushed her forward,
driving water up her nose as buckets of it suddenly
rained down on top of her.
Rebecca gasped air, spinning, her mind connected
to her body again.
David! What's...
"Rebecca!" A choked cry, from somewhere in the buzzing dark. The buzz was clearer now, it was...
CRASH!
Another surging wave, another torrent pouring over
her, seeking to drown her as Griffith had been unable
to do, and as the rain fell away, she saw light - thick
beams of it piercing the dark, wild surface of the cove.
A boat. An engine's powerful, deepening thrum as
it sped toward her over the thrashing sea.
"Rebecca!" David's desperate call, from her left. "I'm here..."
CRASH!
She could see the explosion this time, see the giant
column of water silhouetted against the searching
beams of light before the debris-encrusted wave
knocked her back, blinding her with a vicious slap of
foam. She managed to take a quick gulp of air before
the column came down, crashing over her, spattering
loudly against the choppy surface.
Depth charges, they're firing depth charges...
Umbrella?
The boat was less than thirty meters away when the
engine suddenly cut out, the lights playing across the
water in front of her. There was a splashing move-
ment nearby and the lights moved, one of the blindingly
bright beams finding David's exhausted, dripping face
a short distance away.
A man's voice, coming from the boat now moving
slowly toward them. "This is Captain Blake of the Philadelphia S.T.A.R.S.! Identify yourself!"
S.T.A.R.S.?
Blake went on, his shout louder as the boat came
closer. "The water's not safe! We're coming to get you out!"
David called back, his voice clogged and crack-
ing. "Trapp, David Trapp, Exeters, and Rebecca Chambers..."
When Blake shouted again, he said the most won-
derful, most beautiful words that Rebecca had ever
heard.
"Burton sent us to find you! Hang on!"
Barry. Oh, thank God, Barry!
As drained as she was, as spiritually wasted, torn by
loss and fear from the long, terrible night, Rebecca
had just enough strength to smile.
That's when she heard the choking groan behind
her.
There was darkness, tinged with red and an echo of
pain. In that darkness, there was no self and no peace;
he was alone and engaged in battle, a furious struggle
to find the end to that absence of light. He knew that
finding the end quickly was important, but a maze of
strange and somehow frightening images blocked his
way, insisting that he didn't need to hurry. A ghost, a
soldier, a rage. The ringing laugh of a woman he had
known who was no more and the terrible dead eyes
that had taken away the light in an explosion of fire
and sound. Eyes that he knew but was afraid to
remember...
The maze beckoned him, called to him to explore
deeper and give up his search for the end of
darkness - that the path would only lead to greater
pain - and he'd almost decided to stop fighting, to let
the shadows take over when the light found him in an
explosive blast of deafening thunder.
Then he was being shot through ice and liquid
black, pounded to consciousness by pain - and it was
the pain that he focused on in that screaming, terrible
ride, the pain that drove him to fight the darkness. His
awareness spun away as the air curdled in his lungs and the raging cold numbed the pain, but then he
could breathe, and the jagged piece of bobbing wood
beneath his clawed fingers told him that there was, in
fact, light. He wasn't dead, although he almost wished
he were, he could still hardly breathe, and the pain
in his back was exquisite and then he heard the
sound of David's voice amidst the sloshing cold and
felt that life might be worth living, after all.
He tried to call out, but all that emerged was an
exhausted moan. There was a stab of sharp and
blinding light and then darkness again, but there
was a flicker of awareness this time that allowed him
to understand what was happening. Pain and move-
ment, a feeling of weightless suspension and then
hardness against his cheek. Chill and more move-
ment, the sound of cloth ripping and paper tearing.
Excited voices calling orders, and again, the shriek of
torn flesh. When he came around again, he saw a
shadow in a S.T.A.R.S. vest bending over him with an
IV bag in one hand and a needle in the other.
Hope that's morphine, he tried to say, but again, he
only groaned.
A split second later, he saw two pale blurs hovering
over him as the S.T.A.R.S. shadow continued to work
over him with warm and gentle hands. The blurs were
David and Rebecca, eyes circled with dark, hair
dripping, faces tired and lost.
"You're going to be okay, John," David said softly. "Just rest now. It's all over."
A spreading warmth started to flush through his
body, a delicious, sleepy warmth that banished the
roar of pain to a distant and faraway land. Just as a
friendly darkness came to claim him, he looked into
David's eyes and managed to rasp out what he sud-
denly wanted to say more than anything. It took great
effort, but it had to be said.
"You two look like somethin' a coyote ate and shit
off a cliff," he mumbled. "Seriously . . ."
John was followed into the healing blackness by the
sweet sound of laughter.
The middle-aged S.T.A.R.S. medic had taken John
inside the small cabin on the thirty-foot boat, coming
out only once to tell them that everything looked all
right. Two broken ribs, some deep tissue trauma and a
punctured lung, but they'd managed to patch him up
well enough to call him stable and he was resting
comfortably. A medevac helicopter had already been
radioed for and would be arriving soon, and the
medic seemed confident that John would manage a
full recovery. David had wept a little at the news, and
not been a bit ashamed.
They sat in the back of the boat, huddled under a
scratchy wool blanket as Blake and his team contin-
ued to set charges, powering easily back and forth
across the cove. The Pennsylvania team had already
brought up four of the giant creatures before they'd
seen the explosive burst of air and debris that had
come up from the lab, and it was starting to look as
though there weren't any more.
David had one arm around Rebecca, the girl lean-
ing against his chest as the black sky gradually started
to shade to a deep, ethereal blue. Neither of them
spoke, too tired to do more than watch the team work,
dropping charges and searching the results, back and
forth and back again. Blake had promised to send
divers down for Griffith's tanks as soon as the cove
was clear and John had been picked up. There were
two wetsuits already laid out on the bow's deck, a
young Alpha, whose name David had forgotten, prep-
ping them with studied intensity. He reminded David
of Steve a little bit...
Somehow, the thought of Steve didn't bring the
kind of pain that David expected it would. It hurt, it
hurt like hell - Karen and Steve, gone, but when he
thought of what they had managed to stop, what they
had been a part of...
... it wasn't all for nothing. We stopped Griffith's
insanity, stopped him from effectively killing millions
of innocent people. God, they would have been so
proud ...
The pain was bad, but the guilt wasn't as devastat-
ing as he'd feared it would be. His responsibility in
their deaths was something he knew he'd have to
ponder for a long time to come, but he thought that
there was a good chance that he'd be able to find a way
to come to terms with it eventually. He wasn't sure
how, but the tears he'd been able to shed over John
had struck him as a step in the right direction.
David's tired thoughts turned to Umbrella, to what
role they'd played in Griffith's madness. While they
surely hadn't meant for their researcher to go mad,
they had created the circumstances that allowed it to
happen; their complete disregard for human life could
only have been encouragement for someone like Grif-
fith. And without Umbrella, the scientist would never
have had access to the T-Virus. . .
Someday soon, they'll be held accountable for what
they've done. Not today or tomorrow, but soon . . .
Perhaps Trent would help them again. Perhaps
Barry and Jill and Chris would uncover more in
Raccoon. Perhaps. . .
Rebecca curled closer against him, her breath warm and even against his drying clothes, and David let the
thoughts go for the time being, content to simply sit
and not think at all. He was very, very tired.
As the first rays of the sun slipped over the horizon,
Blake pronounced the waters clean, though neither
David nor Rebecca heard him; both had fallen into a
deep and dreamless sleep beneath the twilight of the
coming day.
EPILOGUE
THE MEETING ROOM WAS A STUDY IN QUIET
but unpretentious elegance. Three men sat at the stately
oak table, a fourth standing by the window and staring
out thoughtfully at the hazy morning sky. The man at
the window could see the others reflected in the glass,
though doubted that they noticed his careful scrutiny;
for as sharp as they were politically, they tended to be
fairly dull about watching what went on around them.
After the phone conference, the man who always
wore blue spoke first, directly addressing the elderly
man with the groomed mustache.
"Do we need to discuss the ramifications of this?"
Blue asked.
Mustache sighed. "I believe the report covered them," he said airily.
The tea drinker broke in, setting his cup down with a
rattle. Steaming liquid slopped over the sides, distorting
the tiny umbrella design that adorned the side.
"I don't think it's a wise idea to underestimate the
magnitude of this . . . difficulty," Tea said. "Particu- larly not with the current instability factor in develop-
ment. . ."
Blue nodded. "I agree. Things like this have a way of getting out of hand. First the secondary in Rac-
coon, now the Cove. . ."
Mustache cut him off with a sharp glance. Blue,
properly abashed, cleared his throat, his face red as he
struggled to recover.
"That is to say, I believe there should be a more
thorough investigation into these matters. Don't you
think so, Mr. Trent?"
The man at the window turned around, wondering
how these people had ever managed to get where they
were. He didn't smile, knowing how much it bothered
them when he didn't smile.
"I'm afraid I'll have to get back to you on that,"
Trent said coolly.
Blue nodded quickly. "Of course, take all the time you need. No hurry, gentlemen, am I right?"
Without another word, Trent turned and walked out of the room, outwardly as intimidating and precise as
they expected him to be, as they wanted him to be.
Inside, he wondered how much longer the game
could go on.
