okay?"
"Be careful," she whispered, and then felt his soft lips graze her forehead, heard him stand up and move
toward the door.
"Just stay here, I'll be back soon," he said, and the door opened and closed, and she was alone.
He'll be okay. He'll get lost trying to find the tunnel,
he'll come back, he'll see that I'm gone and take the lift
back to the surface... I can find the sample and
escape, and it will be over.
Ada counted a minute and then sat up slowly, grimacing at the pounding in her skull. A bad knock
indeed, but not a debilitating one; she could function.
There was a noise outside, and Ada stood up,
walking to one of the small windows. She knew the
sound even before she looked, and felt her heart sink a
little; the transport was heading up, probably recalled
to the factory by an Umbrella team ...
... which means I don't have a lot of time. And if
they find him...
No, Leon would be okay. He was a fighter, he had
the sense to run from danger, he was strong and
decent - and he didn't need to have someone like her
in his life. She'd been crazy to consider it, even for a
moment. It was time to wrap things up, to do what
she'd come to do, to remember who she was - a
freelance agent, a woman with no qualms about
stealing or killing to complete a job, a cool and
efficient thief who could take pride in a career with no
misses. Ada Wong always walked away with the
goods, and it would take more than a few hours with
one blue-eyed cop to make her forget it.
Ada pulled the key cards and master from her
pouch and opened the door, telling herself that she
was doing the right thing and hopeful that in time
she'd come to believe it.
TWENTY-SIX
ANNETTE HAD RUN INTO SOME TROUBLE.
The trip down to the cargo room hadn't been bad;
she'd only run across one carrier, one of the first-
stagers, and had blown a hole into its ashy, withered
skull with the first shot. She'd passed under a sleeping
Re3, but it hadn't stirred from its ceiling bed, and it
seemed that the other creatures still lurking in the
facility shadows hadn't yet figured out that they were
free. Either that, or more of them had disintegrated
into mush than she'd imagined ... in any case, she'd
be gone before she had to worry about it either way.
In all, she made it to the cargo room hall in under
three minutes, and had punched in the key code with
a sense of grand accomplishment; the high from the
shot was wearing off, but she was still feeling good...
... until the hatch to the cargo room refused to
open. Annette had tapped the simple code in a second
time, more carefully - and nothing. It was one of the
only doors in all the facility that didn't open automat-
ically on fail-safe triggering, but it shouldn't have
been a problem - there was a verification disk in the
slot beneath the controls, the disk that was always
there in spite of Umbrella's insistence that only the section heads were supposed to have access...
... and of course, upon checking, she'd seen that it
wasn't there, that it wasn't where it was supposed to
be. Someone had taken it.
Annette stood in front of the locked hatch in the
empty hall and felt the first bright tendrils of panic
reach into her mind, a hysteria that she couldn't allow
to take hold.
The lab's going to blow up, and I've wasted four,
almost five minutes now and where's the goddamn
disk?
"Easy, take it easy, you're okay, it's okay..."
A gentle echo, a whisper of reason in the shining
hall. She'd simply have to take the elevator from a
different level; she had the master key, she had a
weapon, she had time. Not as much, but enough.
Breathing deeply, Annette started back toward the
hall that led to the stairs, reminding herself that all
was well and that it didn't really matter, that Umbrel-
la was going to pay whether or not she made it out
alive. She didn't want to die, she wasn't going to die,
but the gleaming, blood-splattered corridors and
once-sterile labs were going to burn either way, so
there was no need to panic...
... and as she turned right and moved quickly down
the connecting hall, her footsteps loud and hollow in
the silence, a ceiling panel crashed down in front of
her...
... and an Re3, a licker, dropped to the floor and
screamed for her blood.
No!
Annette fired, but only hit its scrabbling shoulder as
it darted forward, reaching out with one deformed
claw to swipe at her. She felt a sharp red pain in her
forearm, and fired again, shocked and disbelieving...
... and the second one caught it in the throat, and it
screamed, blood spraying from its torn neck, its
trumpeting shriek a garbled and spitting cry as it
lunged at her again.
The third shot blew into the gray jelly of its brain,
and it flopped to a spasming stop just inches from her
trembling legs.
Gasping as she realized how close she'd been,
Annette looked down at her bleeding arm, at the thick
scratches that had torn through her lab coat...
... and something gave. Something in her mind.
Her racing mind, her pounding heart, the blood
and the licker, William's licker, dead on the floor in
front of her - all these things whirled and danced,
spinning into a circle that came together and focused
into a single, stunningly simple thought. A thought that made sense of it all.
It isn't theirs.
It was so clear, so crystal clear. She couldn't run
from pain, because pain would find her wherever she
ran; she had proof, dripping down her arm. William
had understood, but had lost himself before he could
explain, before he could tell her what she really
needed to do. She had to confront her attackers, and
make sure they understood that the G-Virus wasn't
theirs, because it didn't belong to them.
But will they understand? Can they?
Maybe, maybe not. But she was so overwhelmed by
the profound simplicity of the truth, she knew that
she had to try, to make them see. The work was
William's. It was his legacy, and now it was hers;
she'd known that before, but now she knew it, a ray of
light in her mind that made everything else trivial.
Not theirs. Mine.
She'd have to find them, tell them, and once they
accepted the truth of it, they would have to leave her
alone and then, if there was still time, she could go
her own way.
But first, she needed another shot. Smiling, her eyes
wide and starry, Annette stepped over the licker and
started for the stairs.
Leon thought he heard shots.
He was in some kind of a surgical bay, the first
room at the end of the first passage that he'd taken
after leaving Ada, and he looked up from the pile of
crumpled papers he'd found, listening, but the dis-
tant cracks didn't repeat, so he went back to his
search. He rifled quickly through the pages, desperate
to find anything besides the endless lists of numbers
and letters beneath the Umbrella letterhead.
Come on, there must be something useful in all
this...
He wanted out, he wanted to get Ada and get the
hell out. The disemboweled corpse slumped in the
corner was reason enough, but it was more than
that - the very air of the room, of the hall outside the
room, and, he was willing to bet, of every room in the
facility, was just wrong. It stank like death, but worse,
there was an atmosphere of something darker, some-
thing amoral. Evil.
They performed experiments here, they ran tests and
God knows what else here - and they'd created a
zombie plague, they'd created the monstrous demon
that attacked Ada, they'd murdered an entire city.
Whatever they meant to do, they were practicing evil.
Evil on a grand scale; the transport had taken them into a secret Umbrella facility, and it was a big
one. From the numbers on the walls, he knew he was on the fourth floor, whatever that meant and the
catwalk he'd taken to get to the strange operating
room, only one of three choices, had stretched over
what had to be sixty or seventy feet of open space, the
bottom to it lost in shadow. He didn't know how deep
he and Ada had come, and he didn't really care; what
he wanted was a map like the one she'd found in the
sewers, a clear and simple diagram with an arrow
pointing to out.
And it ain't here...
Frustrated, Leon pushed the useless papers aside
and saw there was a computer disk lying on the steel
table that had been hidden beneath the stack of
chemical readouts. He picked it up, frowning "For
Cargo Room Verification" was printed on the label in
smudged block letters.
Sighing, Leon slipped it into his pocket and rubbed
at his aching eyes with his right hand, his left arm
basically useless again after carrying Ada from the
lift. He didn't want to look for a computer to see what
was on the disk, he didn't want to go wandering from
room to room looking for the exit, seeing what
atrocities Umbrella had played with before they'd
shut themselves down. He was tired and in pain and
worried about Ada . . . and he decided, as he walked
back to the door, that he should go back and talk to
her. He'd wanted to ease her mind, saying that he
would find the way out, but the place was just too
goddamn huge; if she even knew the direction, or
could remember the floor number...
Leon opened the door, stepped into the hall...
... and a woman with a gun was standing in front of
him, a nine-millimeter pointed at his chest. She was
bleeding, thin streams of crimson pouring from one
arm and dripping down her dirty white lab coat and
the look on her face, the strange, wide-eyed glassy
look that played across her features, told him that
making any sudden moves would be a very bad idea.
Oh, Jesus, what is this?
"You murdered my husband," she said, "you and your partner and the girl, too - all of you, you wanted
to dance on his grave but I have news for you!"
She was high on something, he could hear it in her
high, trembling voice and see it by the way her skin
twitched and ticked. He kept his hands at his sides,
kept his voice low and calm.
"Ma'am, I'm a police officer, and I'm here to help,
okay? I don't want to hurt you, I just..."
The woman dipped her bloody hand into her pock- et and held up something, a glass tube full of some
purple fluid. She grinned wildly, raising it over her
head, the gun still trained on his chest.
"Here it is! It's what you want, isn't it? Listen to
me, do you hear me? It isn 't yours! Do you understand
what I'm saying? William made it, and I helped him,
and it doesn't belong to you!"
Leon nodded, speaking slowly. "It doesn't belong to me, you're right. It's yours, absolutely..."
The woman wasn't even listening. "You think you can take it, but I'll stop you, I'll keep you from taking
it - there's plenty of time, time for me to kill you and
Ada and anyone else who tries to take it!"
Ada...
"What do you know about Ada?" Leon barked, taking a half-step toward the madwoman, no longer
feeling so calm. "Did you hurt her? Tell me!"
The woman laughed, a humorless, insane cackle.
"Umbrella sent her, you stupid shit! Ada Wong, Miss
Love-em-and-leave-em herself! She seduced John to
get the G-Virus but it's not hers, either! It's not, it's
NOT YOURS IT'S MINE!”
A massive shock rocked the floor, pitching Leon to
the ground, a rumbling vibration that shook the
walls...
... and crash, pipes and plaster rained from the
ceiling, a thick beam striking the woman down with a
dull thump. Leon covered his head as bits of concrete
and white chunks of drywall slapped at him...
... and it was over. Leon sat up, staring at the
woman in shock, not sure what had happened. She
wasn't moving. The metal beam that had struck her
still hanging from the ceiling, one of her arms pinned
beneath it...
... and a cool, clear voice suddenly blared from
hidden speakers somewhere in the walls - female,
calm, and punctuated by the rhythmic bleat of a
honking alarm.
"The self-destruct sequence has been activated.
This auto-destruct sequence cannot be aborted. All
personnel should evacuate immediately. The self-
destruct sequence has been activated. This program
cannot be aborted. All personnel should evacuate
immediately..."
Leon scrambled to his feet, took one running step
toward the fallen woman - then reached down and
plucked the glass cylinder from her outstretched
hand, shoving it into his utility pack. He didn't know
who she was, but she was too crazy to be holding
anything in a test tube.
Ada - he had to get to Ada and they had to get out.
The throbbing, screeching alarms blasted through the
echoing halls, chasing him through the door to the
catwalk along with the indifferent-sounding female's
repeating message of imminent destruction.
The recorded voice didn't say how long they had,
but Leon felt quite certain he didn't want to be
around when the clock ran out.
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE COOL, DARK RIDE DOWN THROUGH THE
elevator shaft ended in a squeal of hydraulic brakes
and then silence, as the engines shut down and
trapped them somewhere in the seemingly endless
tunnel.
"Claire? What..."
Claire held a finger to her lips, hushing Sherry
and heard what sounded like an alarm from some-
where outside, a repeating, muffled bleat of honking
noise. There seemed to be talking, too, but Claire
could only make out the faintest mumble.
"Come on, sweetie, I think the ride's over. Let's see
where we ended up, okay? And stay close."
They moved out of the transport room and onto the
platform, the distant sounds not so distant any-
more and there was light, coming from somewhere
behind the lift. Claire took Sherry's hand as they
walked quickly around, not wanting to worry the girl
but feeling pretty sure that it was an alarm they were
hearing. There was definitely someone speaking over
the rhythmic squeals, too, and Claire wanted to know
what they were saying.
The lift had stopped only a few feet down from
some kind of a service tunnel, the light she'd seen
coming from a caged bulb that hung down from the
tunnel's ceiling. There wasn't a door, but there was a
decent-sized crawl space at the end of the short
passage; it would have to do.
It's either that or climb back to the surface, probably
only a mile or so up. . .
Not a chance. Claire boosted Sherry up and then
climbed after her, moving to the front and then
crouch-walking to the dark hole. The bleating sound
got louder the closer she got to the crawl space, the
mumble transforming into a woman's voice. She
strained to hear the words, hoping that she'd catch
"elevator malfunction" and "temporary", but she
still couldn't make it out. They'd have to abandon the
lift and hope that they were leaving it for something
better.
Claire swiveled around, sighing. "Looks like crawl time for me and thee, kiddo. I'll go first, and then..."
SLAM!
Sherry shrieked as something landed on the roof of
the transport behind them, crashing through the top
in a thundering clap of rending metal. Claire grabbed
her, pulling her close, her breath caught in her
throat...
... and a hand, two hands appeared through the
hole in the roof. Two thick arms, clad in shadow...
... and the gleaming white of Mr. X's enormous
skull rose up from the destroyed lift, like a dead moon
