suggested that twenty minutes could be too long to
wait for help.
He's guessing, random numbers, it's not possible... Reston watched the tall, dark-haired man continue
to tap in numbers and thought about what Trent had
said at their last gathering. That White Umbrella
might have a leak.
An information leak, from someone high up. Some-
one who might know the entry codes.
He reached for the phone again and then stopped,
Jackson's subtle warning making him break out in a
light sweat. He had to handle it, he had to keep them
from getting in, but everyone was asleep and there
wasn't an intercom, there was a gun in his room, but if
they had the code, he didn't have time to...
... override.
Reston turned away from the screen and started for
the door, kicking himself as he hurried out of control.
There was a manual override switch in a hidden panel
next to the elevator, he could keep the lift down even
if they had the entrance numbers...
... and the teams will come and collect our little pack
of invaders, and I will have handled it.
He smiled, a smile entirely without humor, and
broke into a run.
Leon watched anxiously as David typed in another
string of numbers, hoping their presence hadn't been
detected yet. He hadn't seen a camera, but that didn't
mean there wasn't one; if Umbrella could build
massive underground laboratories and create mon-
sters, they could hide a video camera.
David hit a final key - and there was sound and
movement at once, the low hiss of hidden hydraulics,
the distant hum of an engine. A giant piece of the wall
to the right of the keypad slid upward. As one, all five
of them raised weapons - and lowered them again
when they saw the thick mesh gate and the black and
empty elevator shaft behind it.
"Damn," John said, a tone of awe in his voice, and Leon had to agree. The panel was ten feet across,
thick and heavy with machinery, and had completely
disappeared into the ceiling in two seconds. Whatever
mechanism was operating it was exceptionally pow-
erful.
"What's that?" Rebecca whispered, and Leon
heard it a second later, a distant hum. Apparently
the entry code had also recalled the elevator; they
could hear it rising, hear the growing echo of well- oiled sound in the freezing darkness of the shaft. It
was rising fast, but was still a long way down. Leon
wondered, not for the first time, how the hell Um-
brella had managed to build such a thing; the Rac-
coon lab had also been massive, with God-knew-
how-many floors of laboratory, all of it deep beneath
the surface of the city.
They must have more money than God. And one hell
of an architect.
"We may have triggered a warning device or
alarm," David said quietly. "It might not be empty." Leon nodded along with everyone else; they were
all silent and tense as they waited, John pointing his
rifle at the mesh gate.
Reston found the flat, seamless panel, and pried it
open without any trouble -
- but there was a lock on the switch, a thin metal
rod hooked through the top, keeping it from being
pushed down. It wasn't until he saw the lock that he
recalled it; yet another of Umbrella's precautions, one
that suddenly seemed monumentally stupid.
The keys, the workers all have them, I got a set
before I came...
Reston ran his hands through his hair, wracking his
brain, feeling desperate and harried.
Where'd I put the goddamn security keys?
When he heard the lift being recalled to the surface
only seconds later, it was all he could do to keep from
screaming. They had the code. They had guns and
there were five of them and they had the code.
Takes two minutes to get to the top, I've still got time
and the keys are...
Blank. His mind was blank, and the seconds were
ticking past. He'd already hit the recall button, but it
wouldn't bring the elevator back down if someone
opened the gate on the surface. For all he knew, the
assassins or saboteurs or whatever the hell they were
had already pried opened the gate, were now watching
the lift on its way up, waiting...
... or maybe throwing a few pounds of plastique into
the shaft ... or...
... control, they're in control!
Reston turned and ran, across the wide corridor
and ten feet to the right, down the small offshoot
outside of control. His first day at the Planet, one of
the construction people had shown him all of the
internal locks - backup generator, drug cabinet in
surgical ... manual override for the lift. He'd
yawned his way through that particular tour, then
tossed the keys into a drawer in the control room,
knowing that he wouldn't be needing them.
He hurried through the door, deciding that he could
berate himself for forgetting the keys later, wondering
how things had gone so out of control in such a short
period of time. Only ten minutes ago he'd been
sipping brandy, relaxing...
... and ten minutes from now, you could be dead.
Reston hurried.
The elevator was big, at least ten feet across and
twelve deep. John squinted as it rose into view, the
harsh light from a naked bulb in the ceiling nearly
blinding after their long stint in darkness.
At least it's empty. Now all we gotta do is avoid
getting ambushed and murdered when we hit the
bottom.
The elevator came to a smooth stop. The latch on
the mesh gate unlocked and the gate slid into the wall.
John was closest. He glanced at David, who nodded a
go-ahead.
"First floor, shoes, menswear, Umbrella assholes,"
John said, not particularly bothered that he didn't get
a laugh. Everyone had their own preferred method for
dealing with tension. Besides, his sense of humor was
more fully developed.
Right over their heads, he thought, scanning the walls of the elevator car for anything unusual. Well, maybe
not over their heads; it was more that they just didn't
appreciate his fine wit. He kept himself amused, that
was the important thing, it kept him from freezing up
or turning into a basket case.
The elevator looked okay, dusty but solid. John
stepped carefully inside, Leon right behind -
- then John heard a noise, just as a red light
started to blink on the lift's control panel.
"Be still," John hissed, holding his hand up, not wanting anyone else to get on until he saw what the
light was for -
- and the mesh gate closed behind him, the latch
snapping shut. He spun, saw that Leon was on board,
saw Claire and Rebecca lunging for the gate from the
other side and David running for the keypad.
There was a rasping click from overhead and Leon,
closer to the front, shouted at Claire and Rebecca -
"Get back!"
- because the wall panel was coming down, slam-
ming down, and the girls were stumbling back. John
caught a final glimpse of their shocked and pale faces
in the gloom -
- and the door had closed, and although he hadn't
touched a thing, the elevator was going down. John
crouched by the controls, punching at the buttons, and saw what the flashing red light was for.
"Manual override," he said, and stood up, looking at the young cop, not sure what to say. Their simple
plan had just been totally screwed.
"Shit," Leon said, and John nodded, thinking he'd summed it up perfectly.
EIGHT
"SHIT." CLAIRE HISSED, FEELING HELPLESS and afraid, wanting to beat against the wall panel
until it released the two men.
Trap, it was a trap, a setup.
"Listen ... it's going down," Rebecca said, and
Claire heard it, too. She turned, saw David tapping
the keypad with one hand, flashlight in the other, his
face grim.
"David," Claire started, and stopped as David
spared her a pointed glance, a look that told her to
wait. He barely paused in his number punching,
returning his entire attention back to the controls.
She turned to Rebecca, saw that Rebecca was
chewing at her lip nervously, watching David.
"He must be trying all the codes," she whispered to Claire, and Claire nodded, feeling sick with worry,
wanting to talk action but realizing that David needed
to concentrate. She compromised, leaning in to whis-
per back to Rebecca; if she just stood there quietly in
the freezing dark, she'd lose her mind.
"Think it was Trent?"
Rebecca frowned, then shook her head. "No. I think we hit a silent alarm or something. I saw a light
flashing in the elevator before the gate closed."
Rebecca sounded just as scared as she was, just as
terrified, and Claire thought about how close she and
John must have gotten. As close as Leon and herself,
maybe. Claire instinctively reached for her hand and
Rebecca took it, squeezing it tightly, both of them
watching David.
Come on, one of them has to open it, to bring it
back. . .
A few tense seconds passed, and David stopped
hitting keys. He pointed the flashlight up, the reflec-
tion just enough light to see each other by.
"Seems that the numbers don't work if the lift is in
use," he said. His voice was calm and easy, but Claire could see that his jaw was clenched, the muscles in his
cheeks twitching.
"I'll try them all again in a moment, and then
again, but since someone else seems to have access
to the lift's master control, we should start consider- ing other options. Rebecca - start looking for a cam-
era, check the corners and ceiling; if we're going to be
here awhile, we'll need privacy. Claire, see if you can
find any tools we might use to get through the wall -
- tire iron, screwdriver, anything. If the codes won't
work, we'll see if we can't force our way in. Ques-
tions?"
"No," Rebecca said, and Claire shook her head. "Good. Take a deep breath and get to it."
David went back to the keypad and Rebecca walked
to the corner, turning her flashlight to the ceiling.
Claire took a deep breath and turned, looking at the
dusty table in the middle of the room. It had stacked
drawers on either side; she opened the first, pushing
aside papers and clutter, thinking that David really
kicked ass under pressure.
Tire iron, screwdriver, anything . . . be careful,
please be careful and don't get killed . . .
Claire forced herself to take another deep breath;
then she opened the next drawer, continuing her
search.
John took the lead, which Leon was only too happy
to follow. He may have survived Raccoon, but the ex-
S.T.A.R.S. soldier had been in and out of combat
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