affair was that Umbrella hadn't managed to get their
greedy hands on William's synthesis. They hadn't and
they never would. Everything that had gone into the
creation of the G-Virus would be buried under a
thousand burning tons of stone and wood, along with
William and all of the monsters they had created for
the company. She would go into hiding for a while,
take some time to heal, to consider her options and
then she would sell the G-Virus to the competition.
Umbrella was the biggest, but they weren't the only
conglomerate working on bioweapons research and
when she was through with them, they wouldn't be
the biggest anymore. It wasn't much of a revenge, but it was all she had left.
"Except for Sherry," Annette whispered, and the thought of their young daughter made her heart ache,
a different pain but pain nonetheless. Since the day
Sherry had been born, Annette had meant to spend
more time with her, to focus on the child instead of on
her part in William's brilliant work. And yet some-
how the years had slipped by, William's promotions
had kept coming up, the work had grown ever more
interesting and valuable and although both she and
William had made promises to themselves and each
other that they would make more of an effort to
develop their family life, they had continued to put it
off.
And now it's too late. We'll never be a family, we'll
never be parents together. All that time wasted, slaving
for a company that sold us out in the end. . .
It was too late; there was no point in mourning
what could have been. All she could do now was make
sure that Umbrella wouldn't get anything else from
the Birkin family. William was gone, but there was
still Sherry; that part of him would go on, and
Annette meant to finally become the mother she
should have been all along. Of course she'd have to
wait until things cooled down before she could collect
Sherry, at least a few months, but the girl would be
safe; the cops would send her to live with William's
sister, it was in both of their wills . . .
. . . unless Irons is still alive. That fat, greedy bas-
tard could find a way to screw even that up if given half
a chance.
She hoped he was dead; even if he wasn't directly
responsible for Umbrella's awareness of the G-Virus,
Brian Irons was a disgusting, arrogant man with the
morals of a sea slug. After years of loyalty to the
company, he'd been bought out for a measly hundred
thousand dollars. Even William had been surprised,
and he'd had an even lower opinion of the police chief
than she had...
On the screen, the Re3 had finished its meal. All
that was left of the dead man was an empty shell,
arched, bloody ribs, and a faceless cup of skull, the
surely vibrant colors lost to the video's flat shades of
gray. The licker scrabbled out of view, trailing sticky
fluids in its wake. Thanks to the T-Virus, all of the
reptile series were efficient killers, although the 3s had
design flaws - the protruding cerebrum was the most
obvious, but they also had a ridiculously high meta-
bolic rate; keeping them fed had been a constant
hassle.
Not a problem anymore. Plenty of canton to go around - and lucky them, they'II get a chance for a hot
dinner soon enough ...
Annette felt drained of energy, and didn't want to
go back out into the facility - but she couldn't just
keep hoping that William would happen by one of the
working cameras. She'd heard him up on level three,
perhaps two days before, but hadn't seen him in
almost twice as long; she couldn't keep waiting.
Umbrella's people were probably already working on
a way in - even with the mainframe wiped, there were
other ways to get past the doors...
... and William may have found a way out. I can't
keep denying it, no matter how much I want to.
There was an abandoned factory west of the lab, a
shipping company that had been bought up by Um-
brella to ensure that the underground levels would
stay secret; it was how Umbrella had managed to
build the complex in the first place without arousing
suspicion, hiding equipment and materials in the
factory's warehouses and using the heavy machinery
lift to transport them. Although the entrances from
the factory had still been sealed off the last time she'd
checked, there was a slim chance that William had
gotten through - and if he could get to the factory, he
could get into the sewers.
Annette forced herself to stand up, ignoring the
cramps in her legs and back as she picked up the
handgun on the console. She didn't know much about
guns, although she'd figured out how to use one
quickly enough, after...
... after they came for the G-Virus, the men in the
gas masks, shooting and running and William, poor
William dying in a puddle of blood and I didn 't see the
syringe until it was too late...
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to push
that terrible memory aside, trying to forget about the
incident that had taken William from her and turned
Raccoon into a city of the dead. It didn't matter
anymore. The journey ahead wouldn't be a pleasant
one, and she had to concentrate. Escaped Re3s, first-
and second-stage infected humans, the botany experi-
ments, the arachnid series - she could run into any of
the T-Virus carriers, not to mention whomever Um-
brella had managed to sen
And William. My husband, my beloved - the first
human G-Virus carrier, who isn't really human any-
more.
She'd been wrong to think that she had no more
tears inside. Annette stood in the middle of the vast,
sterile room five floors beneath the surface of Rac-
coon and wept lost, racking sobs that didn't even begin to touch the pain of her loneliness.
Umbrella would be sorry. Once she could be sure
that William was beyond their reach, she was going to
destroy their precious facility, she was going to take
the G-Virus and run, she was going to make sure that
they understood how badly they'd screwed up - and
God help anyone who tried to stop her.
SEVENTEEN
ADA RAN INTO THE CELL BLOCK ONLY A STEP
behind Leon, just in time to see the reporter stumble
out of his cage and fall to the floor. "Help him!" Leon shouted, and ran past Bertolucci to check out the cell.
Ada stopped in front of the gasping reporter but
ignored the command, waiting to see if whatever had
gotten to him was going to spring out of the open
cell...
... he was behind bars, how did this happen.
She waited, weapon pointed after Leon as he leapt
in front of the open cell, her heart pounding - and
saw the bewilderment on his youthful face, the open
surprise. The way his gaze searched the cell told her
that it was empty. Unless the attacker was invis-
ible. . .
Not a chance. Don't even start thinking like that,
don't let it get to you.
Ada knelt next to the reporter, taking in immedi-
ately that he was in a bad way - dying bad. He'd
crumpled into a half-sitting position, his head against
the bars of the cell adjacent to his. He was still
breathing, but it wouldn't be long before he stopped.
Ada had seen the look before, the far-seeing gaze and
the trembling, the pallor, but what she didn't see
was how, and that scared her. There were no wounds.
It had to be a heart attack, maybe a stroke -
- but that scream.
"Ben? Ben, what happened?"
His flickering gaze fixed on her face, and she saw
that the corners of his mouth were cracked and
bleeding. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that
came out was a rasping, unintelligible croak.
Leon crouched down next to them, looking as
confused as she felt. He shook his head at her, an
unspoken answer to her unasked question; there was
apparently no sign of what had happened.
Ada looked down at Bertolucci and tried again.
"What was it, Ben? Can you tell us what happened?"
The reporter's shaking hands crawled up his body,
resting across his chest. With a visible effort, he
managed to whisper a single word.
". . . window. . ."
Ada wasn't reassured. The cell's "window" was
hardly a foot across, maybe six inches wide, and set
eight feet off the floor - nothing more than a ventila-
tion hole that opened into the parking garage. Noth-
ing could have gotten through - at least nothing that
she'd heard of or read about, and that meant that
there were dangers she wasn't prepared against.
Bertolucci was still trying to speak. Both Ada and
Leon leaned closer, straining to catch his painful
whispers.
". . . chest. Burns, it... burns . . ."
Ada relaxed just a bit. He'd seen or heard some-
thing outside of the cell, something that had kicked
off a massive coronary; that, she could accept.
A pisser for the journalist, but it would save her the
trouble of killing him herself. . .
He reached out suddenly and grasped her forearm,
staring up at her with an intensity that surprised her.
His grip was weak, but there was desperation in his
wet eyes - desperation and some frustrated sorrow
that inspired not a little guilt for what she'd been
thinking.
"I never told . . . about Irons," he breathed, obvi- ously struggling to hang on to life, to get it all out.
"He's ... working for Umbrella ... all this time. The
zombies ... are Umbrella, research ... and he covered
up the murders but I couldn't ... prove it all, yet...
was going to be my ... exclusive."
Bertolucci closed his braised-looking eyelids, breath-
ing shallowly as his fingers fell away from her arm, and
she felt a surge of pity for him in spite of herself.
The poor dumb jerk; his big secret was that Umbrella was
into bioweapons and that Irons was on the take. It
would have been a big scoop, too, but apparently he
hadn't even been able to get any hard evidence.
He doesn't know dick about the G-Virus, he never
did - and he's going to die regardless. Talk about a shit
deal.
"Jesus," Leon said softly. "Chief Irons..."
Ada had all but forgotten how clueless the young
cop was. He was obviously new, but a couple of times
he'd seemed so perceptive that she'd been taken
aback; the kid wasn't just a testosterone case, there
was definitely something going on upstairs...
... knock it off already, he's not much younger than
you. The reporter's about to kick and you need to be on
your way, not worrying about Officer Friendly...
Bertolucci spasmed suddenly, his hands clutching
at his chest as he moaned, a sharp, tortured cry of
