wouldn't be the biggest anymore. It wasn't much of a revenge, but it was all she had left. 'Except for Sherry,' Annette whispered, and the thought of their young daughter made her heart ache, a different pain but pain nonetheless. Since the day Sherry had been born, Annette had meant to spend more time with her, to focus on the child instead of on her part in William's brilliant work. And yet some– how the years had slipped by, William's promotions had kept coming up, the work had grown ever more interesting and valuable and although both she and William had made promises to themselves and each other that they would make more of an effort to develop their family life, they had continued to put it off.
And now it's too late. We'll never be a family, we'll never be parents together. All that time wasted, slaving for a company that sold us out in the end…
It was too late; there was no point in mourning what could have been. All she could do now was make sure that Umbrella wouldn't get anything else from the Birkin family. William was gone, but there was still Sherry; that part of him would go on, and Annette meant to finally become the mother she should have been all along. Of course she'd have to wait until things cooled down before she could collect Sherry, at least a few months, but the girl would be safe; the cops would send her to live with William's sister, it was in both of their wills…
… unless Irons is still alive. That fat, greedy bas-tard could find a way to screw even that up if given half a chance.
She hoped he was dead; even if he wasn't directly responsible for Umbrella's awareness of the G-Virus, Brian Irons was a disgusting, arrogant man with the morals of a sea slug. After years of loyalty to the company, he'd been bought out for a measly hundred thousand dollars. Even William had been surprised, and he'd had an even lower opinion of the police chief than she had… On the screen, the Re3 had finished its meal. All that was left of the dead man was an empty shell, arched, bloody ribs, and a faceless cup of skull, the surely vibrant colors lost to the video's flat shades of gray. The licker scrabbled out of view, trailing sticky fluids in its wake. Thanks to the T-Virus, all of the reptile series were efficient killers, although the 3s had design flaws – the protruding cerebrum was the most obvious, but they also had a ridiculously high meta– bolic rate; keeping them fed had been a constant hassle.
Not a problem anymore. Plenty of canton to go around – and lucky them, they'II get a chance for a hot dinner soon enough…
Annette felt drained of energy, and didn't want to go back out into the facility – but she couldn't just keep hoping that William would happen by one of the working cameras. She'd heard him up on level three, perhaps two days before, but hadn't seen him in almost twice as long; she couldn't keep waiting. Umbrella's people were probably already working on a way in – even with the mainframe wiped, there were other ways to get past the doors…
… and William may have found a way out. I can't keep denying it, no matter how much I want to. There was an abandoned factory west of the lab, a shipping company that had been bought up by Um-brella to ensure that the underground levels would stay secret; it was how Umbrella had managed to build the complex in the first place without arousing suspicion, hiding equipment and materials in the factory's warehouses and using the heavy machinery lift to transport them. Although the entrances from the factory had still been sealed off the last time she'd checked, there was a slim chance that William had gotten through – and if he could get to the factory, he could get into the sewers.
Annette forced herself to stand up, ignoring the cramps in her legs and back as she picked up the handgun on the console. She didn't know much about guns, although she'd figured out how to use one quickly enough, after…
… after they came for the G-Virus, the men in the gas masks, shooting and running and William, poor William dying in a puddle of blood and I didn 't see the syringe until it was too late…
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to push that terrible memory aside, trying to forget about the incident that had taken William from her and turned Raccoon into a city of the dead. It didn't matter anymore. The journey ahead wouldn't be a pleasant one, and she had to concentrate. Escaped Re3s, first-and second-stage infected humans, the botany experi– ments, the arachnid series – she could run into any of the T-Virus carriers, not to mention whomever Um– brella had managed to send.
And William. My husband, my beloved – the first human G-Virus carrier, who isn't really human any-more.
She'd been wrong to think that she had no more tears inside. Annette stood in the middle of the vast, sterile room five floors beneath the surface of Rac– coon and wept lost, racking sobs that didn't even begin to touch the pain of her loneliness. Umbrella would be sorry. Once she could be sure that William was beyond their reach, she was going to destroy their precious facility, she was going to take the G-Virus and run, she was going to make sure that they understood how badly they'd screwed up – and God help anyone who tried to stop her.
SEVENTEEN
Ada ran into the cell block only a step behind Leon, just in time to see the reporter stumble out of his cage and fall to the floor. 'Help him!' Leon shouted, and ran past Bertolucci to check out the cell. Ada stopped in front of the gasping reporter but ignored the command, waiting to see if whatever had gotten to him was going to spring out of the open cell…
… he was behind bars, how did this happen.
She waited, weapon pointed after Leon as he leapt in front of the open cell, her heart pounding – and saw the bewilderment on his youthful face, the open surprise. The way his gaze searched the cell told her that it was empty. Unless the attacker was invis– ible…
Not a chance. Don't even start thinking like that, don't let it get to you.
Ada knelt next to the reporter, taking in immedi– ately that he was in a bad way – dying bad. He'd crumpled into a half-sitting position, his head against the bars of the cell adjacent to his. He was still breathing, but it wouldn't be long before he stopped. Ada had seen the look before, the far-seeing gaze and the trembling, the pallor, but what she didn't see was how, and that scared her. There were no wounds. It had to be a heart attack, maybe a stroke -
– but that scream.
'Ben? Ben, what happened?'
His flickering gaze fixed on her face, and she saw that the corners of his mouth were cracked and bleeding. He opened his mouth to speak, but all that came out was a rasping, unintelligible croak. Leon crouched down next to them, looking as confused as she felt. He shook his head at her, an unspoken answer to her unasked question; there was apparently no sign of what had happened. Ada looked down at Bertolucci and tried again.
'What was it, Ben? Can you tell us what happened?'
The reporter's shaking hands crawled up his body, resting across his chest. With a visible effort, he managed to whisper a single word.
'… window…'
Ada wasn't reassured. The cell's 'window' was hardly a foot across, maybe six inches wide, and set eight feet off the floor – nothing more than a ventila– tion hole that opened into the parking garage. Noth-ing could have gotten through – at least nothing that she'd heard of or read about, and that meant that there were dangers she wasn't prepared against. Bertolucci was still trying to speak. Both Ada and Leon leaned closer, straining to catch his painful whispers.
'… chest. Burns, it… burns…'
Ada relaxed just a bit. He'd seen or heard some– thing outside of the cell, something that had kicked off a massive coronary; that, she could accept. A pisser for the journalist, but it would save her the trouble of killing him herself… He reached out suddenly and grasped her forearm, staring up at her with an intensity that surprised her. His grip was weak, but there was desperation in his wet eyes – desperation and some frustrated sorrow that inspired not a little guilt for what she'd been thinking. 'I never told… about Irons,' he breathed, obvi-ously struggling to hang on to life, to get it all out.
'He's… working for Umbrella… all this time. The zombies… are Umbrella, research… and he covered up the murders but I couldn't… prove it all, yet… was going to be my… exclusive.'
Bertolucci closed his braised-looking eyelids, breath– ing shallowly as his fingers fell away from her arm, and she felt a surge of pity for him in spite of herself.
The poor dumb jerk; his big secret was that Umbrella was into bioweapons and that Irons was on the take. It would have been a big scoop, too, but apparently he hadn't even been able to get any hard evidence. He doesn't know dick about the G-Virus, he never did – and he's going to die regardless. Talk about a shit deal. 'Jesus,' Leon
