Genesis (8 page)

Before departing the lab, the figure tossed the vial toward the center of the room, then turned, exited, and closed and locked the door.

The vial tumbled end over end through the air in a graceful arc until it collided with the edge of one of the metal desks.

Glass shattered. Interior tubing broke. Shards splayed out onto the cold metal floor, blue liquid pooling around it.

A miasma emitted from the blue liquid into the air.

It headed toward the air-conditioning vents.

Maintaining as complex an underground system as the Hive required tremendous feats of engineering. It also required a beyond-top-of-the-line air-conditioning system that regulated the constant flow of oxygen and carbon dioxide in proper amounts to keep the five hundred people living and working there alive and comfortable—not to mention the assorted lab animals and guard dogs.

It was an efficient system—it had to be, or the Hive would not be viable.

So it didn't take long at all for the T-virus to make its deadly way through the complex.

The Red Queen, still literal-minded, had not blinked when the figure removed all the samples of the deadliest
virus ever created by the human race, because the figure had entered all the right security codes.

But when that same virus was detected in the air of the Hive, there was only one thing she could do.

Evacuating the Hive would not be practical. It was physically impossible to remove all five hundred and twenty-three human beings from the underground complex without risking the virus spreading.

Which meant that the those human beings were as good as dead, as was any other living creature within the Hive that breathed the air provided by the beyond-top-of-the-line air-conditioning system.

The Red Queen's first directive was self-preservation, which meant preservation of the Hive.

She began the process of sealing off the Hive. That would take about fifteen minutes.

Then she'd do the rest.

MARK TORVALDSEN LOVED HIS JOB.

He'd just started working for the Umbrella Corporation, and today was his first day in the Hive, Umbrella's state-of-the-art underground facility. True, he had to live in a big hole in the ground. On the other hand, he had a five-year guaranteed contract and was working in his dream job. The research and development he'd be doing in Pharmaceuticals put him on the cutting edge of his field.

The best part, though, was the five-year contract.

Through high school and college, Mark had formed several close friendships, primary among them being Vince Markinson, Jack Annichiarico, and Eleanor Wu. The “awesome foursome” they called themselves, and they'd been inseparable throughout their teen years,
attended each others' major life events—including Vince's wedding to his on-again-off-again girlfriend, and Jack's and Eleanor's wedding to each other—and still got together once a month for their Bad Movie Night.

Unfortunately, Bad Movie Night had been getting to be somewhat depressing of late. After making big bucks during the dot-com boom doing Quality Assurance for companies who thought that acquiring a cool-sounding URL was the ticket to fame and fortune, Vince soon lost first his job, then his wife. Two years later, he was struggling to find freelance work, and seriously considering taking a job driving a cab. Jack, after moving from computer programming to management, found himself out of work, and his programming skills too out of date to make him employable in a depressed economy. Just last week, Eleanor was downsized when the accounting firm she worked for decided to cut costs.

Meanwhile, Mark was living in fear of his own employment prospects by the growing instability of his own company. Profits were down, and it looked very likely that the company was going to go under.

Instead, the company was bought by its primary competitor: the Umbrella Corporation.

Shortly thereafter, they dissolved the company and laid off all of the employees. But some were offered new positions within Umbrella. Mark was flattered to be one of them, especially since they offered more security, more money, and more interesting work.

Given what his closest friends were going through, having to live in a hole in the ground seemed a small price to pay.

He wasn't sure if he'd be able to attend Bad Movie Night for a while, but that was looking more and more like it was a good thing. Vince was getting increasingly depressed, and Eleanor's ability to stay employed was the only thing keeping her and Jack going. Much as he loved the idea of viewing
Evil Brain from Outer Space
or
The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies
with his oldest and dearest friends, Mark had the feeling that the Bad Movie Nights weren't going to be any fun for some time.

Least of all for the one person in the group still gainfully employed.

Not that his new job would give him much time for fun.

But that was okay. At least he
had
a job . . .

The residence they provided for him in the Hive was actually nicer than his apartment in downtown Raccoon City had been, and the cafeteria was well stocked. Mark could barely boil water, and the idea of living somewhere where the food was provided appealed to him greatly.

On this, his first morning at the new job, he had only a cup of coffee. Never much of a breakfast eater, Mark really only needed his morning caffeine to get himself started, and that did him until he took lunch at around one or so. The cafeteria had a nice French roast, and he had served himself a cup with some milk and Equal.
He didn't bother with a lid—he preferred his coffee lukewarm, and leaving the top exposed cooled it down faster.

He headed toward the elevator that would take him from the cafeteria level to his office in Pharmaceuticals, coffee securely in his right hand, the gray jacket of his brand-new suit slung over his right arm.

Someone collided with his back, sending him stumbling forward, and jostling his right arm.

A sharp stab of heat seeped into his chest right over his heart where the still-hot coffee spilled on his new white shirt, and a great deal of the liquid splattered onto the jacket he had over his right arm as well.

Mark looked up to see the retreating form of the person who had bumped him, moving purposefully down the hall, not having even broken stride after the collision.

“Thank you!” Mark cried out in annoyance, but whoever it was didn't even turn around.

Finishing his approach to the elevator bank, Mark inspected the damage. His ID badge, clipped to his shirt pocket, was dripping coffee, and the stain had gone through both his white shirt and his undershirt. He'd paid hundreds of dollars for this suit.

Next time, Mark promised himself, he was going to grab a lid.

A pretty young woman with curly hair looked at Mark with sympathy.

“Some people,” she said sympathetically.

“Yeah,” Mark muttered. He looked up from his
stained clothing to see that the woman had big, beautiful eyes. He ventured a smile. “It's a brand-new shirt.”

“New suit too?” she asked.

Mark wondered if his first-day jitters were that obvious. “Yeah. First day.”

The woman nodded. “Men don't usually get that worked up over a stain like that unless the suit's new.”

Chuckling, Mark said, “Yeah, well, I've hardly gotten to use it.”

He looked down at her ID badge, which gave her name as Ella Fontaine. Mark wondered idly if she was single. Not that there was good reason to wonder this, since he knew damn well that he'd never work up the courage to actually ask her out if she was. The only dates he'd gone on since college were those train-wreck blind dates Jack and Eleanor had set him up with over the last couple of years which, if anything, made his fear of talking to women even more pronounced.

With a low chime, the elevator announced its arrival. A man in a gray suit exited, and Mark, Ella, a woman in the white shirt, pants, and coat indicating someone who worked in one of the labs, and a few others got on. A wretched Muzak rendition of Simon & Garfunkel's “Sound of Silence” wafted over the speakers

About two seconds after the elevator started moving, it lurched to a halt again. The display had just flipped from 11 to 10. A shrill tone sounded, catching Mark off guard.

“What is that?”

“Fire drill,” Ella said matter-of-factly. “Looks like we'll be taking the stairs.”

“Taking them where?” Mark asked. “We're underground.”

“Up.” She spoke with the tone of someone who had been through the process dozens of times. “There's a section on the top level that has another staircase that leads to the main office in downtown Raccoon. We usually don't have to go that far, though, just to the section up top. Then when the drill's over, we head back to our offices.”

Mark supposed that, all things considered, fire safety was something they had to be especially concerned with in the Hive.

After an interminable time—Mark's watch said it was fifteen seconds, though it had felt like an hour—he pushed his way toward the display.

“Shouldn't the doors
open
or something?”

He tapped the
DOOR OPEN
button repeatedly, but nothing happened.

The alarm kept going, though.

“It's supposed to stop at the nearest floor,” Ella said.

Mark turned around to see that she, too, had moved forward.

Then the lights in the elevator went out.

Emergency lights came on a moment later, but now the tiny space of the elevator felt even tinier in the much dimmer illumination.

The fire alarm had also stopped. As annoying as it was, Mark found he preferred it to the deathly quiet that ensued in its wake.

Mark felt panic well up inside him. Sweat started to bead on his brow and elsewhere.

A small part of his brain registered that his chest was getting sweaty too, which meant it was going to mix with the coffee. That small part wanted to giggle hysterically at the idea of salty coffee.

Mark had never considered himself especially claustrophobic before. In fact, he'd happily hid in closets as a kid, particularly when he was playing hide-and-seek with his two brothers, and he certainly would never have agreed to work in the Hive if he had any problem with enclosed spaces.

But then, he had never been trapped in an unmoving, dimly lit elevator before, either. He was starting to get nostalgic for the Muzak “Sound of Silence.”

Ella, meanwhile, had the presence of mind to grab the emergency phone. Mark admired her good sense, and thought maybe he would have the courage to ask this one out.

“Hello?” she said into the phone.

A moment of silence passed.

“Hello?” she said again, more forcefully this time.

The sweat on Mark's brow intensified proportionately to the increased urgency in Ella's tone.

When she started pushing buttons next to the phone, seemingly at random, Mark feared the worst.

“The line's dead.”

Now Mark knew that the sweat and the spilled coffee were intermingled and it was even odds as to whether or not his perspiration would stain the new shirt more than
the coffee. He could feel his heart pounding against his rib cage.

He clutched his coffee cup so tightly in his right hand that the cardboard started to dent. With his left, he hit the
ALARM
button, which did nothing, then started punching buttons at random.

“What's going on? Has this ever happened before? We have to get
out
of here! We
have
to get
out
of here!”

He started pounding the door.

One of the other men in the elevator said, “Take it easy.”

Mark turned angrily on the man.
“You
take it easy!” Now his heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest, his breaths coming more rapidly.

“Quiet!” Ella cried.

Blinking, Mark looked over at Ella, who was holding up a hand. He tried desperately to get his breathing, at least, under control.

“Quiet,” she said again, now speaking in a whisper.

Ella was looking up and squinting as if trying to hear something.

Mark couldn't hear anything, except for the pounding of his heart.

Then he caught it. A low buzz, increasing in intensity.

Another alarm?

Then as it got louder, he realized what it was.

Screams.

People screaming.

There was something else, too. A low rumbling that was just under the screaming sounds.

At its loudest, Mark was able to place the screaming: it was just to his left.

Now the sweat that seemed to cover every inch of Mark's body went cold as he started to realize what it was he was hearing.

Both the screaming and the rumbling started to diminish.

That, Mark knew, would happen as the next elevator over plunged downward.

The screams faded once again into a low buzz. The rumbling went away completely.

Mark closed his eyes and tried again to get his breathing under control and failed miserably—mainly because he knew what was next. He waited for the inevitable subsequent sound.

A crunching, explosive noise mixed with wrenched metal and the springing sound of metal cables whipping around. The elevator had hit bottom.

“Oh my God.” Ella's voice sounded hollow and lifeless.

A description that, Mark feared, would soon apply to this elevator.

This sort of thing wasn't supposed to happen. This was the Umbrella Corporation. They made the best computer equipment and health-care products in the country. They had the wherewithal to build the most amazing underground complex in the history of humanity.

This was not a company that built elevators that plunged to their doom during fire drills.

Mark heard a lot of screams. That elevator was full.

People were dead.

This wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to be starting his new dream job, one that would keep him gainfully employed for at least five years.