spiders, who nested in the swollen, segmented bodies even now.
What to do? Killing them would fulfill a need in him, the need to avenge the lives of the children, the need to assert his control. But exposing Umbrella was the priority, bringing the company to ruin by laying open its stinking heart . . . which Billy and Rebecca would surely do, if they survived.
The pair followed the corridor to its end, then through the door of a long-abandoned office. After a brief consultation with their map, they continued on into a dead-end room where live specimens had once been kept. The cages were long gone, the room empty now. The young man wasn't sure why they had chosen a dead end—until he saw them move to the northeast corner, both of them looking up at the dark rectangle near the ceiling.
The ventilator shaft. It wouldn't have been labeled on the map; perhaps they believed it to be a way out. In fact, it led to—
The young man shook his head. Dr. Marcus's private chamber, the room where he'd once “entertained” certain attractive young test subjects. Why couldn't they simply leave? They'd find nothing in the private room, nothing—
—unless.
The ventilator shaft was connected to another live specimen area, one that wasn't empty. And the creatures there hadn't been fed in days. They would very, very hungry by now. All he'd need to do would
be to have the many unlatch a gate or two ...
Rather then consider them an integral part of his plan, maybe he should think of Billy and Rebecca as test subjects. They might die—which, in truth, would probably only delay Umbrella's exposure for a short while; he was impatient, but he had to consider the entertainment value. Or, they might survive. In which case, they'd have an even greater story to tell.
The young man smiled his blade of a smile as Billy gave Rebecca a boost, lifting her up to the ventilator shaft. She crawled inside, disappearing from view. Wouldn't they be surprised, if a few of the leftovers from the primate series showed up to play?
Around him, the children cooed, the walls, the ceiling dripping with their slippery fluids. Surrounded by the many, the fate of Umbrella in his hands—and now two little soldiers for him to test, to enjoy watching as they pitted their abilities against the remnants of Umbrella's bio-organic weaponry— he was happy. Would they live or die? Either way, he would be satisfied.
“Open the cages, my darlings,” he murmured, and began to sing.
>Eight
Rebecca pushed herself through the air shaft, ignoring the layers of dust and cobwebs that were collecting on her hair and clothes, ignoring the suffocatingly close walls of thin metal. The map only showed the connecting shaft running between two rooms on the basement's first floor, but there were spaces on the second, sub-basement floor that seemed to be part of the system, too. It seemed likely that one of the shafts vented outside. Billy hadn't been overly enthusiastic—likely wasn't the same as probably, he'd said— but they both agreed that it was worth a shot.
At least it's not very long, she thought, edging toward the square of light not far ahead. There was a thin metal grille covering the exit, but it popped off with a few taps, clattering to the floor below.
She got a quick look at a big stone room, dank and empty in the flicker of a dying light fixture, then pushed herself out, grabbing the edge of the vent and somersaulting to a crouch. She stood up, brushing herself off, taking in the new room.
Oh, jeez- It was like some medieval dungeon, large, gloomy, a cavern made of stone. The rock walls were fixed with chains, the chains fixed with manacles. There were a number of devices sitting around that she didn't recognize, but that could only have been made to inflict pain. There were boards with rusty nails in them, knotted ropes in bunches, and next to a scum-thick broken wall fountain was a large standing case that looked like an iron maiden. She had no doubt that the dark, faded stains in the crevices of the rough-hewn wall were blood.
“Everything okay? Over?”
She picked up her radio. “I don't think 'okay' is the right word,” she said. “But I'm all right, over.”
“Is there another air shaft, over?”
She turned, searching the walls for a vent—and saw one, twenty feet overhead.
“Yeah, but it's in the ceiling,” she said, and sighed. Even if they had a ladder to reach the vent, they couldn't climb straight up. She spotted the room's one door, in the southwest corner. “Where does the door from here lead, over?”
A pause. “Looks like it opens into a small room that leads back into the corridor we came through,” he said. “Should I meet you back in the corridor, over?”
Rebecca started for the door. “That makes the most sense. Maybe we can try—“
Before she could complete the sentence, a terrible sound filled the room, like nothing she'd ever heard before but also strangely familiar. It was a high, monkeylike shriek—
—that's it. The primate house, at the zoo.
—that was echoing, howling through the cavernous space, coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. Rebecca looked up just as a pale, long-limbed creature peered out at her from the ceiling vent.
It bared its teeth, thick and sharp, clutching the air in front of its muscular chest with limber fingers, screeching horribly.
Before she could take a step, the creature leaped from the vent, jumping off against one rock wall before landing on the floor in a squat, on a tumble of thin boards in the middle of the room. It stared up at her, its lips drawn back over its yellowed teeth. It looked almost like a baboon with short white fur, except that there were great tears in the fur, glistening patches of dense red muscle showing through. It didn't look as though it had been attacked, but rather as though its muscles had grown too large for its skin and were splitting through. Its hands were too big, its nails overly long, and they dragged and ticked across the stone floor as it edged toward her from the pile of boards, grinning maliciously.
Slow... Rebecca eased her weapon off her hip, as frightened as she'd been all night. Normal baboons were capable of ripping a person apart, and this one looked like it had been infected.
The baboon edged closer—and from overhead she heard another, at least two other voices begin to shriek, the noise getting louder, more of the sick animals approaching. It was close enough now for her to smell, the hot and musky scent of urine and feces and wildness, of overpowering infection.
“Rebecca! What's going on?”
She still held the radio in her left hand. She depressed the button, afraid to speak but more afraid that Billy's shouting would incite the creature, make it attack.
“Sshhh,” she said, her voice soft, as much to calm the animal as to shut Billy up. She took a step back, clipping the radio to the collar of her shirt, raising the nine-millimeter. The baboon squatted lower, tensing its legs —
—and sprang, just as she fired, just as two more lithe and screaming forms hopped and capered into the room from the air shaft, one of them striking her head as it fell past, its ragged nails tearing at her hair. The strike pushed her out of the attacker's way, but it also knocked her off balance, her shot hitting nothing but wall, all of them landing on the pile of boards—
—and then the floor collapsed.
There had been no new developments. The strange young man, whoever he was—and Wesker had his suspicions, which he kept to himself—had not appeared again, nor had the image of James
Marcus. The cameras didn't seem to be working correctly, either, making surveillance something of a moot point. Many had simply gone black, leaving them nothing to see, to consider.
After several long, boring moments of listening to Birkin talk about his new virus, Wesker pushed back from the video console and stood up, stretching. It was funny—a few years ago, he might have been interested in his old friend's work. Now, with his own departure from Umbrella's folds looming, he found himself unable even to pretend.
“Well, it's been quite a day,” Wesker said, breaking through William's obsessive monologue when he took a breath. “I'll be off.”
Birkin stared at him, his pinched, pallid face looming ghostly by the white light of the screens. “What? Where are you going?”
“Home. There's nothing more we can do here.”
