TWELVE
REBECCA COULD STILL FEEL THE LINGERING
warmth of Steve's hand in hers as David, John,
and Karen walked around the corner, John grinning
broadly.
"Sorry to crash, but we figured you guys could use a
little chaperoning," he said. "Nothing like young love,
though, am I right?"
As the three stepped into the room, Rebecca struggled
to quash the blush she felt creeping up on her,
suddenly feeling horribly unprofessional. All they'd
done was hold hands, and only for a second, but
they were in the middle of an operation, in hostile
territory where even a moment's lapse of concentration
could get them killed.
John must have picked up on her embarrassment.
"Ah, don't mind me," he said, his grin fading. "I'm
just giving Steve-o a hard time, I didn't mean anything
by it."
David interrupted, shooting John a pointed glance.
"I think we have more important things to discuss,"
he said evenly. "We need to update, and I have a few
things I'd like to go over."
He nodded toward the journal she still held. "They
found the room, but didn't touch anything. Did you
find anything else useful?"
She nodded, relieved by the news and glad for the
change of subject. "It looks like there are only four
Trisquads, though the entry that mentioned it is six
months old."
David looked relieved. "That's excellent. John and
Karen had another encounter outside of D, managed
to get five of them - that means there may only be one
team left."
They pulled chairs away from the small tables that
lined the walls, forming them in a loose semi-circle in
the middle of the room. David stayed standing, addressing
them solemnly.
"I'd like to do a quick recap, to make certain we're
all on the same page before we go any further. In
short, this facility was used for T-Virus experimentation
and has been taken over by one of the researchers
for reasons unknown. The other workers have been
killed and the offices purged of incriminating evidence.
Rebecca believes that the biochemist Nicolas
Griffith is responsible, and the fact that the grounds
are still being patrolled suggests that he's alive, somewhere
in the compound - though I don't feel we
should concern ourselves with trying to find him.
We've already completed two of the tests given to us
by Dr. Ammon, through Trent, and my hope is that
the 'material' he has hidden for us will be the evidence
we need to formally charge Umbrella with
criminal activity."
He folded his arms and started to pace slowly as he
talked, glancing between them. "Obviously there's
already plenty of proof that illegalities have occurred
here; we could leave now and turn the matter over to
federal authorities. My concern is that we still don't
have enough hard evidence on Umbrella's involvement
other than the computer system's software
and the journal that Steve and Rebecca found, Umbrella's
name isn't on anything, and both of those
could be explained away. My feeling is that we should
continue with the tests and find whatever Dr. Ammon
meant for us to have before we evac, but I want to
hear from each of you about it first. This isn't an
authorized op, we're not following orders here, and if
you think we should go, we go."
Rebecca was surprised, could see that the others felt
the same by their expressions. David had seemed so
certain before, so enthusiastic about their chances.
The look on his face now told a different story. He
seemed almost apologetic about wanting to continue,
and looked as though he wanted for one of them to
suggest otherwise.
Why the change? What happened?
John spoke first, glancing at the rest of them before
looking at David. "Well, we've made it this far. And if
there's only one more group of zombies out there, I
say we finish up."
Rebecca nodded. "Yeah, and we still haven't found
the main lab, we don't know why Griffith did this -
- whether he suffered a psychotic break or is actually
hiding something. We may not find out, but it's worth
a look. Plus, what if he destroys more evidence after
we've gone?"
"I agree," Steve said. "If the S.T.A.R.S. are as
deeply involved with Umbrella as it looks, we're not
going to get another chance. This may be our only
opportunity to dig up a connection. And we're already
so close, the third test is right here - we do that
one, we're one step away from finishing."
"I'm up for it," Karen said softly.
At the strained sound of her voice, Rebecca turned
to look at her, noticing for the first time that Karen
didn't look so good. Her eyes were bloodshot, her
complexion almost a pallor.
"Are you okay?" Rebecca asked.
Karen nodded, sighing. "Yeah. Headache."
Must be a migraine, she looks like hell. . .
"What is it, David?" John asked abruptly. "What's
eatin' you? You know something you're not telling
us?"
David stared at them for a moment, then shook his
head. "No, nothing like that. I just - I have a bad
feeling. Or rather, a feeling that something bad is
going to happen."
"Little late, don'tcha think?" John said, grinning.
"Where were you when we got into the raft?"
David half-smiled in response, rubbing the back of
his neck. "Thank you, John, I'd almost forgotten. So,
it's decided then. Let's solve our next puzzle, shall
we? Oh, Rebecca, take a look at Karen's eye while
we're at it, it's giving her some trouble."
They stood up and moved toward the back of the
room, for the table in the northwest corner marked
with a blue nine. Steve and Rebecca had already
looked when they'd found the room, though there was
no clue as to what the test was - a small, blank
monitor screen with a ten-key hooked to it sat on the
metal table, an enigma.
Rebecca motioned for Karen to sit on the chair in
front of test ten, the purpose of which also escaped
her - it consisted of a circuit board wired to a plank
and what looked like a pair of tweezers connected to it
by a black wire. She bent down to take a look,
frowning. The woman's right eye was extremely irritated,
the pale blue cornea floating in a sea of red. Her
eyelid had a bruised, swollen look.
She turned to ask for David's flashlight and saw
that as he sat down in front of the scheduled test, the
screen flickered on, several lines of type appearing in
the center of the monitor.
"Some kind of motion sensor..." Steve started to
say, but David held up his hand suddenly, reading
aloud what had appeared on the screen in a rapid,
anxious voice.
" 'As I was going to Saint Ives, I met a man with seven
wives, the seven wives had seven sacks, the seven sacks
held seven cats, the seven cats had seven kits; kits, cats,
sacks, wives, how many were going to Saint Ives?'"
There was a digital readout on the screen, showing
00:49 and counting down. In the time it had taken
David to read the question, eleven seconds had already
ticked off the clock.
David stared at the screen, his thoughts racing
furiously as the team leaned in behind him. Tension
radiated from them, and David felt a sudden prickle
of sweat break out across his forehead.
Don't count, that was the clue. But what does it
mean?
"Twenty-eight," John said quickly. "No, wait,
twenty-nine, including the man..."
Steve cut him off, talking just as fast. "But if they
had seven kittens each, that would be forty-nine plus
twenty-one, seventy, seventy-one with the man."
"But the message said don't count," Karen said. "If
you're not supposed to count - does that mean don't
add, or ... wait, there's the man with the wives and the
speaker, that's another one..."
Thirty-two seconds had elapsed. David's hand hovered
over the key pad.
Think! Don't count, don't count, don't...
"One," Rebecca said quickly. " 'As I was going to
Saint Ives' - it doesn't say where the man with the
wives was going. That's what it means, the clue -
- don't count anyone except the one who was going to
Saint Ives!"
Yes, it makes sense, a trick question...
They had twenty seconds left.
"Anyone disagree?" David asked sharply.
No answer. David hit the key, entered it...
... and the countdown stopped, sixteen seconds to
spare. The screen turned itself off. From somewhere
overhead, the now familiar chime sounded.
David exhaled, leaning back in the chair.
Thank you, Rebecca!
He turned around to tell her as much, but she was
already bending to examine Karen's eye, fixated on
her patient.
"I need a flashlight," she said, barely glancing
around as John handed his to her. She turned it on,
shining it into Karen's eye as the rest of them looked
on silently, watching them. Karen didn't look well;
there were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin
had gone from pale to almost sickly.
"It's pretty inflamed ... look up. Down. Left and
right? Does it feel like there's something rubbing it, or
is it more like a burn?"
"Actually, more like an itch," Karen said. "Like a
mosquito bite times ten. I've been scratching it,
though, that might be why it's so red."
Rebecca turned off the torch, frowning. "I don't see
anything. The other one looks irritated, too ... did it
just start itching all of a sudden, or did you touch it,
first?"
Karen shook her head. "I don't remember. It just
started itching, I guess."
A look of sharp, almost violent intensity flashed
across Rebecca's face. "Before or after you were in
room 101?"
David felt a cold hand clutch at his heart.
Karen suddenly looked worried. "After."
"Did you touch anything while you were in there,
anything at all?"
"I don't. . ."
Karen's red eyes widened in sudden horror, and
when she spoke, it was a breathless, quivering whisper.
"The gurney. There was a bloodstain on the
gurney and I was thinking about ...I touched it. Oh,
Jesus, I didn't even think about it, it was dry and I, my
hand wasn't cut and oh my God, I got a headache right
after my eye started itching."
Rebecca put her hands on Karen's shoulders,
squeezing them tightly. "Karen, take a deep breath.
Deep breath, okay? It may be that your eye just itches
and you have a headache, so don't jump to conclusions
here, we don't know anything for sure."
Her voice was low and soothing, her manner direct.
Karen blew out a shaky breath and nodded.
"If her hand wasn't cut..." John started nervously.
Karen answered him, her pale features composed
but her voice trembling slightly. "Viruses can get into
the body through mucous membranes. Nose, ears ...
eyes. I knew that. I knew that but I didn't think about
it, I... wasn't thinking about it."
She looked up at Rebecca, and David could see that
she was struggling to maintain her composure. "If I
am infected, how long? How long before
I become ... incapacitated?"
Rebecca shook her head. "I don't know," she said
softly.
David felt as though a raging blackness had enveloped
him, a cloud of fear and worry and guilt so vast
that it threatened to overwhelm his ability to move,
even to think.
My fault. My responsibility.
"There's a vaccine, right?" John asked, his dark
gaze darting between Karen and Rebecca. "There's a
cure, wouldn't they have a shot or something here if
someone got it by accident? They'd have to, wouldn't
they?"
David felt a sudden surge of desperate hope. "Is it
possible?" he asked Rebecca quickly.
The young biochemist nodded, slowly at first but
then eagerly. "Yeah, it's possible. It's probable, they
created it."
She looked at David seriously, urgently. "We have
to find the main lab, where they synthesized the virus,
and quickly. If they developed a cure, that's where the
information would be ..."
Rebecca trailed off, and David could see what she'd
left unspoken in her troubled gaze; if there was a cure.
If Dr. Griffith hadn't taken the information there, too.
If they could find it in time.
"Ammon's message," Steve said. "In that note, he
said we should destroy the lab, maybe he left us a
map, or directions."
David stood up, his hope building. "Karen, are you
feeling well enough to ..."
"... Yes," she said, cutting him off, standing up.
"Yes, let's go."
Her red eyes were bright with fervent intensity, a
mix of despair and wild hope that made David's heart
ache to see.
God, Karen, I'm so, so sorry!
"Double time," he said, already turning for the
door. "Let's move."
They quickly jogged for the front of the building,
John's jaw clenched, his thoughts a grimly determined
loop of angry intention.
No way some goddamn bug is taking Karen down,
no chance, and if I find the bastard who set this
nightmare up he's Dead, capital D, Dead meat. Not
Karen, no way in hell...
They reached the front door and silently drew
weapons, checking them, tensely impatient for David
to give the signal. Karen, always so cool and collected
in times of stress, had a shocked vagueness about her,
like she'd just been kicked in the gut and hadn't yet
managed to take a breath. It was the same look that
John had seen time and again on the faces of disaster
Survivors - the haunted disbelief in the eyes, the slack
and terrible blankness of expression that spoke of a
yawning emptiness deep inside. It hurt him to see her
like that, hurt him and made him even angrier. Karen
Driver wasn't supposed to look like that.
"I lead, John in back, straight line," David said
softly.
John saw that he looked almost as freaked as Karen,
though in a different way. It was guilt gnawing at their
captain, he could see it in his reluctant gaze, the tight
set of his mouth. John wished he could tell him that
blaming himself was wrong, but there wasn't time and
he didn't have the right words for it. David would
have to take care of himself, just as they all would.
"Ready? Go."
David pushed the door open and then they were
slipping through, back into the gentle hiss of waves
and the pale blue light of the moon. David, then
Karen, Steve, Rebecca, and finally John, crouched
and running across the packed dirt of the open
compound.
There was darkness and the scent of pine, of salt,
but John's soldier mind wasn't telling him anything
he didn't already know as they pounded through the
shadows. There was only anger, and fear for Karen...
...making the sudden blast of M-16 fire a total surprise.
Shit!
John dove for the ground as the thundering rattle
opened up to their right, saw that they were just over
halfway to block E as he rolled and started to fire.
Then the air was filled with the blast of nine-millimeter
rounds, crashing over the steady pulse of automatic
rifles.
Can't see, can't target. . .
He found the muzzle flashes at three o'clock and
jerked the Beretta around, squeezing the trigger six,
seven, eight times. The stutter of orange-white light
blocked the shooters from view but he saw one of the
flashes disappear, heard the clatter decrease
and a rage overtook him, not the "soldier mind"
but a blinding, screaming fury at the diseased attackers
that far exceeded any he'd ever known. They
wanted Karen to die, those numb, brainless nightmares
wanted to stop them from saving her.
Not Karen. NOT KAREN.
A strange, feral howl beat at his ears as he pushed
away from the dusty earth and then he was standing,
running, firing. Only when he heard the shouts of the
others, the Berettas except for his holding fire, did he
realize that the howl was coming from him.
John ran forward, screaming as he fired again and
again at the things that meant to slow them up, to kill
them, to claim Karen as one of their own. His
thoughts were no longer words, just an endless, formless
negative - a denial of their existence and what
had created them.
He charged ahead, not seeing that they had stopped
firing, that they were falling, that the shadows had
fallen silent except for the thunder of his semi and the
scream that poured from his shaking body. Then he
was standing over them and the Beretta had stopped
crashing and jumping, even though he still pulled the
trigger.
Three of them, white where there was no red,
decayed flesh bursts covering their pitiful, wasted
forms.
Click. Click. Click.
One of them had a face that was a mass of puckered
scar tissue, twisting white risers of gnarled skin except
for where a fresh, bloody hole had punched through
its forehead. Another, one eye spattered against its
withered cheek, pooling viscous fluid in the rotting
cup of its ear.
Click. Click.
The third was still alive. Half of its throat was gone,
tattered to pulp, and its mouth opened and closed
soundlessly, opened and closed, its filmed dark eyes
blinking slowly up at him.
Click.
He was dry-firing, the scream dying away in his
ragged throat. It was the sound of the hammer falling
uselessly against hot metal that finally released him
from the rage - that, and the slow, helpless blink of
the wretched thing at his feet.
It didn't know what it was. It didn't know who they
were. Once it had been a man, and now it was rotting
garbage with a gun and a mission it couldn't possibly
understand.
They took his soul. . .
"John?"
A warm hand on his back, Karen's voice low and
easy next to him. Steve and David stepped into view,
staring down at the gaping, blinking shell of humanity
in the shaded moonlight, the last remnant of an
experiment in madness.
"Yeah," he whispered. "Yeah, I'm here."
David trained his Beretta on the monster's skull
and spoke softly. "Stand back."
John turned away, started walking back for their
last destination with Karen at his side, Rebecca's
slight form in front of him. The shot was incredibly
loud, a booming crack that seemed to shake the
ground beneath their feet.
Not Karen, oh please not one of us. That's no way to
go out, no way to die. . .
Then David and Steve were with them and without
speaking, they broke into a jog for block E, moving
quickly through the emptiness that had claimed the
night. The Trisquads were no more, but the disease
that made them might even now be coursing through
Karen's body, turning her into a creature with no
mind, no soul, doomed to a fate worse than death.
John picked up speed, silently swearing to himself
that if they found this Dr. Griffith, he was going to be
awfully goddamned sorry that they did.
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