August 19 th
Progenitor is a marvel, but its applications are still so unsure. Just when we think we have the amplification rate documented, when we have a half dozen tests all showing the same results, everything falls apart. Ashford is still banking on working the cytokine numbers, coming at it backward, but he's dreaming. We need to keep looking.
Spencer keeps asking me to be the director of his new training facility Maybe ifs because of the business, but he's becoming intolerably pushy. In any case, I'm considering it. I need a place to
November 30th
Damn him. “let's have lunch, James,” he says, old comrades and fond memories. It's bullshit. He wants Progenitor ready, now. His “friends” in their White Umbrella clubhouse, with their ridiculous spy games for the rich and jaded— they want something exciting to play with, to auction off, and they don't want to wait for it. Fools. Spencer thinks that this will all come down to money but he's wrong. That's not what any of this is about, not anymore; I don. 't know that it ever was. I have to strengthen my own position, guard my queen, so to speak, or I could be steamrolled.
September 19th
At last, at last! I engineered a plasmid with leech DNA and then recombined it with Progenitor— and it's stable! It was the breakthrough I've been counting on. Spencer will be happy damn him, though I'll only let on that some progress has been made, not how much, not how I've named it after him, my own private joke. I'm calling it T, for Tyrant.
October 23rd
I can't think ofthem as human beings. They're test subjects, that's all, that's all. I knew the research would have to come to this someday, I knew it and—and I didn. 't know it would be this way.
I must keep my focus. The T-virus is magnificent; they, these subjects should be honored to experience such perfection. Their lives pave a road to a higher awareness.
Test subjects. That's all Pawns. Sometimes, pawns must be sacrificed for the greater good.
January 13th
My pets have been progressing. With their own DNA in the recombinant virus, I thought I could predict how infection would change them, but I was wrong. They've begun to colonize, like ants or bees. No individual is better than any other; they work together, a hive mind, coming together for a higher purpose. My purpose. I didn't see it at first, I was blind, but this is vastly more rewarding than the work on humans. I must continue those tests, however—I can't let on that I've discovered the true meaning, the value of T and what it represents. Spencer would try and take it, I know he would. My king is in the open.
February 11th
They've been watching me. I go into the lab, I see that things have been moved. They try and hide it, make everything look as it did, but I see. It's Spencer, damn his soul, he knows about my leeches, my beautiful hive, and this— this persecution won. 't end until one of us is dead. I can't trust anyone . . . Albert and William, perhaps, my castles, they believe in the work., but I may have to eliminate some ofthe others. The game draws to a close. He'll try for my queen, but the win will be mine. Checkmate, Oswell.
It was the last entry. Rebecca closed the journal and set it aside, next to the chess set that was centered on the desk. When she'd found the hidden cache, she'd thought the rudimentary maps had been the prize. There were two, one that showed what appeared to be three floors of the building's basement, including a few unmarked areas that perhaps led outside. The other seemed to be upstairs, a room labeled observatory next to a wide, open area marked breeding pool. But the small, leatherbound journal, dusty and crinkled with age—she didn't know how old, exactly, but one of the entries about working with the leeches had “1988” marked in an upper corner—had been the real discovery. Written by James Marcus, presumably, apparently the creator of the T-virus, the same virus that turned men into zombies, that had infected the train and probably half of Raccoon forest, if the recent murders were any clue.
Rebecca gazed blankly at the room's strange decor, the giant chessboard that dominated the floor, her mind working. He'd obviously been crazy by the end, his ramblings about chess, about the “true meaning” of the virus. Maybe running experiments on people had driven him over the edge.
Her radio signaled. She'd no sooner pushed receive before Billy's breathless voice blared in her
ear.
“Where are you? We need to regroup, now. Hello? Ah, over.”
“What happened? Over.”
“What happened is that I ran into another one of those leech-people in the can, and it very nearly whacked the crap out of me. Zombies we can handle, but these things—they eat bullets, Rebecca. We don't have enough ammo to hold more of them off. Over.”
“They've begun to colonize, like ants or bees.” Who was controlling them? Marcus? Or had they developed their own leader, a queen?
“Okay,” Rebecca said. She picked up the basement and observatory sketches she'd found, stuffed them into her vest as she stood up. After a second, she grabbed the journal, too, slipping it into a hip pocket. “Uh, meet me on the landing, where that picture of Marcus was. I may have found a way out, over.”
“On my way. Watch your back, over and out.”
She hurried out of the room and down the hall, moving quickly. She hadn't gotten far in her exploration, just an empty meeting room and then the office with the chess sets; thankfully, she hadn't run into anything hostile. Billy was right about the leech-men, there was no way they could handle more of those. In fact, it seemed likely that the only reason the collection of leeches on the train had stopped attacking them was because they were called off. She'd had vague hopes of staying in the nice, safe house until help arrived, but after reading Marcus's journal, hearing that the training facility was infected—they needed to get out.
After all she'd already been through tonight—the forced helicopter landing, the train, Billy, the crash, now this—she kept expecting the cavalry to ride in, for someone else to take over, to send her home to a warm dinner and bed so that she could wake up tomorrow and start her normal life again. But it seemed instead that she was being drawn even deeper into the mystery of Marcus and his creations, of Umbrella and its evil experiments.
The young man had moved to a place where the hive could comfortably gather, a large space,
warm and moist and far from the possibility of daylight. The many surrounded him now, singing their tuneless song of water and darkness, but he was not soothed. He'd watched with cold fury as the girl—Rebecca, the killer had called her, and his cursed name was Billy—stole Marcus's journal, slipping it into a pocket before leaving the office. This wasn't why he'd had the desk opened for her, not at all.
The map of the observatory, she was supposed to take only the map.
The two met now in front of the portrait doorway, both speaking at once, surely relating their findings, their murderous exploits. He could see the thief and the killer on a video screen at one side of his new environment—a lower level of the treatment plant—but he could see them better through the dozen pairs of rudimentary eyes watching them, the children peering out at them from the shadows. The minds of the many were powerful, able to send images to one another, to him; it was how they could work together so effectively. Rebecca and Billy had no understanding of how vulnerable they were, of how easily he could reach out and take their lives from them. They survived still only by his grace.
A thief and her murdering friend; Billy had killed a collective. He'd burned it. The few survivors were still straggling home to their master, their poor bodies scorched, showing him the death of the whole by their lack of cohesion. How had he dared, this unimportant man, this insect?
Rebecca held out the maps and they both studied them, too stupid, surely, to know what was expected of them. The observatory was the key to their escape, but they would undoubtedly try the basement first. It was just as well. He was no longer so sure he wanted them to go free.
They started down the stairs, disappearing from the screen, from the many's sight, but only for a second. As the couple came back into view through another camera, they stopped, staring down at the litter of arachnid bodies, dead and curled on the floor. There were four of the giant spiders, all killed mere moments before, eliminated so that Rebecca and her friend might avoid their poisonous bite. The spiders were another experiment, one doomed to fail, too slow, too difficult to handle, but lethal enough for the young man to have been concerned. He was sorry, now; watching the thief and murderer die would be his pleasure, in spite of what it did to his plans for Umbrella. The couple moved on, unaware that they were being watched by the creatures that had killed the
