Resident Evil. Retribution (8 page)

Alice sheathed her knife, drew a pistol and turned it toward the floor to ceiling window.

“So why don’t we just get the hell out of here?” she said to Ada.

The Asian woman glanced at her watch, and calmly held up her hand.

“Sunup is in less than a minute. Why don’t you just see for yourself?” She nodded toward the window. Alice looked, but still saw nothing but darkness.

Then the first rays of sunlight penetrated the gloom outside. There was something oddly diffuse about the sunlight, as if it were filtered through some translucent medium. It illuminated icy blue mountains—only the mountains were
inverted
. The sunlight intensified, filtering through the icy blue peaks.

Through the…

“Ice!” Alice gasped. She was seeing the crystalline-blue mountains of floating ice floes. The light spread, and underneath the ice floes lay the great, angular sprawl of the facility, built right into the seabed.

The corporation had built their facility under the Arctic ice pack. As more and more light penetrated the waters, a gigantic concrete and steel bunker became visible. On it was emblazoned the hammer and sickle of the old USSR…

Alice gazed for a long moment at the frigid vista coming into view through the filter of ice and seawater, just beyond the wall-window. She shivered. That water would be brutally cold—death wouldn’t be instant, but it would be quick.

They weren’t getting out of here that way…

The glowing ice floes and inverted peaks were fascinating, even beautiful. Shafts of light reticulated, dancing across the murky seabed. A walrus swam past the window, the great beast looking surprisingly graceful. In the distance, she could see the dark undulating mass of a whale.

That hammer and sickle symbol, though faded with time, was still striking in its crimson starkness.

She turned back to Ada and the monitors—where Wesker waited for her reaction.

“Where exactly
are
we?” Alice asked.

“The Straits of Kamchatka,” he replied smoothly. “Northern Russia. The old Soviet Union built submarine pens here, back in the nineteen-eighties. After the Cold War ended, the Umbrella Corporation expanded them—and built the testing floor.”

So that was it. After she’d lost consciousness off the coast of Los Angeles, they’d brought her here, to an old Soviet base. But where, she wondered, was Wesker? Was he here in this sprawling facility? Or perhaps in some high-tech den under Tokyo? If she found him, and killed him
again
—would it turn out to be yet another Wesker clone?

How many
were
there?

“How do we get out?” Alice asked, looking at Ada.

“We cross the test floor,” she replied, her tone uncannily matter-of-fact, “through the submarine pens, then take an elevator to the surface.”

“Just like that?”

“No, not really.” Ada smiled.

“I didn’t think so.”

“But don’t worry… we are going to have a little help.”

“We,” she said.
Alice shook her head doubtfully. She had no idea what this woman’s agenda was—still didn’t know why Ada had helped her escape from the interrogation. And who was this “help” she was talking about? Might they end up being just as much Alice’s enemy as the Umbrella troopers?

Sure, I won’t worry,
Alice thought.
Hell, why should I? Just because this facility is overrun with troopers and well stocked with the Undead?

“Don’t worry.”

Yeah, right.

Two vehicles churned across the snowfield atop a wind-raked ridge. The rectangular tractor-tread vehicles, called Sprytes—bigger than Humvees, and armored— ground their way steadily through the unforgiving expanse of Arctic snow and ice. The Kamchatka Peninsula. A tern flew overhead. Other than that, the only movement was spurts of snow-laden wind.

At last the ungainly vehicles rolled to a halt near the edge of a steep ridge.

Luther West, a tall, good-looking black man with a short-trimmed beard, tugged the fur collar of his military camouflage coat more tightly around him as he climbed out. The wind wasn’t strong, but it was so cold that it felt like being hit in the face with a fist of ice. His breath plumed in the air.

“Damn, it’s cold!” he said. “You know I’m from
California,
don’t you?”

Luther was addressing Leon Kennedy—a rugged man, mid-thirties, whose stern expression suggested that he had no interest in Luther’s protestations.

“Barry—let’s take a look,” Leon called out.

Barry Burton climbed down from the second vehicle. A professional soldier, with an unlit cigar clamped in his mouth—he was trying to quit but couldn’t quite give it up—he wore a customized .44 Magnum Colt Anaconda on his hip. He brushed roughly past Luther.

“Did it just get colder around her?” Luther asked, trying to make a joke of their attitude.

No response to that, either.

How had he gotten involved with these guys? They’d shared many of the same trials, coming from the prison he and Alice and Chris and the others had used as a fortress against the Undead. He wasn’t a professional gun-toter, but he’d become a pretty good shot. His pro-basketball skills had helped quite a bit.

Could be they thought he was a media whore— resented that for some reason. But none of that mattered now. There weren’t any basketball teams— no TV commercials, no endorsement deals, and sure as hell no superstars. There was little television or internet to speak of, anymore. Instead, there was a burning world overrun by the Undead. And in Hell, everyone was equally damned.

They were joined by Sergei, their Russian technical specialist. Barry led the way to the edge of the cliff where the four men stood, side by side. Far below, at the foot of the ridge, Luther spotted a string of weathered, rust-streaked concrete-and-iron bunkers, part of the last century’s Soviet military installation. Barry grunted, peering at the bunkers through digital binoculars. Luther could hear the chip-enhanced device humming as he adjusted them.

Beyond the rugged ground at the foot of the cliff lay the rocky beach, and the pack ice of the Kamchatka Strait. It was colder here—where they were exposed to the wind off the sea—and Luther had to work at it to keep his teeth from chattering. But he wasn’t about to complain again.

In the distance, he saw the gray hulks of abandoned battleships, and one large carrier, all locked in the ice—part of the old, mothballed Soviet fleet. They seemed like gravestones—forlorn, decaying monuments to another era.

Leon pointed at the three huge vents by the water’s edge.

“There they are.”

Sergei grunted.

“Intake vents for the submarine pens,” he observed.

Barry swept his binoculars over the abandoned facility one last time.

“Looks abandoned.”

“That’s what they want you to think,” Leon observed.

Luther was ready to get moving.

“So what are we waiting for?” he asked. Leon shot him a cutting look. Barry, Leon, and Sergei were a tight unit, used to each other’s rhythms. Luther was odd man out, no matter what he did.

Leon sighed.

“Let’s get something clear right now,” he said in an irritatingly condescending tone of voice. “You’re here as an advisor—nothing more. You know this woman, and that’s your value to me.

“Understand?” he concluded.

And what’s your value to me?
Luther thought. But he didn’t say it. He had his own agenda, and he didn’t want to gum it up with arguments. These guys would reunite him with Alice—and maybe the others…

So he just returned Leon’s glare.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Leon growled.

It’s a yes for now,
Luther thought.

He turned and walked back to the ice crawlers.

Jill Valentine felt herself drawn back to the empty interrogation cell. It was almost as if she hoped to find the prisoner here again.

She remembered interrogating Alice, remembered slamming her with the sonic torture. She’d had a strange feeling, then—almost as if she were prolonging the process. Interrogation was the only kind of prisoner contact that Jill was allowed. Yet sometimes she’d felt as if there was something she wanted to say, something she wanted to do. But she wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps tell Alice that she felt sympathy for her.

Maybe tell her, “I can’t control this.”

But all that had come out of Jill’s mouth had been the pre-planned questions. Every time she got close to that vagrant, taunting feeling, a pulse from the scarab muted it, drove it away. Keeping her on task as security chief.

Which was exactly what she needed to be, right now—back on task. There was no place for emotion, for questioning, for intuition, in the life she lived. She was part of Umbrella—part of the great effort, the grand design. That was all that mattered.

So Jill found herself looking down at the scarabshaped mechanism on her chest. Her intimate connection with the corporate masters.

She reached up to touch it… and suddenly drew her hand back.

No. That’s not allowed.

Two masked Umbrella troopers from her squad strode up, and Jill, standing in the open doorway, felt as if she had to say something.

“The lock’s intact,” she noted, peering intently at the doorframe.

“How did she get out?” a female trooper asked.

“She’s obviously getting help from the inside,” Jill snapped impatiently. “We have a traitor in this facility.”

“Central computer seems to be offline, Ma’am,” the other trooper reported. “We have limited surveillance and communications.”

“What about Control?” Jill demanded.

“Still can’t raise them.”

“Well try harder!” she said. “That was my prisoner—I want her back!”

Suddenly a HUD style display appeared, projected directly onto Jill’s eyes by the scarab. Scrolling text filled her vision.

FACILITY COMPROMISED INITIATE LOCKDOWN

At the same moment a masked female trooper pointed her thermal tracking device at the corridor floor outside of the cell. Jill could see the screen—and on it, the outline of Alice’s feet.

“We have residual thermal readings… Looks like she’s at least twenty minutes ahead of us.”

“Good for you, trooper,” Jill responded. “At least
someone
is showing some initiative. What’s your designation?” Without waiting for a reply she looked at the nametag. “Carlyle. Okay, Carlyle, stick close to me. We’re going to track down an escapee… and initiate a lockdown.”

The Sprytes ground along the rise above the stony beach, then came to a halt in front of the bunkers. Luther got out of his vehicle, and was instantly shivering.

He followed as Barry exited and moved cautiously over to the structures. They looked formidable, up close—hulking edifices of concrete and iron, the metal bleeding rust like bloody tears down the face. Weeping for the USSR.

Leon strode up beside them, with Tony—the last man on the team.

“Barry, Tony, take care of the vents,” Leon said, motioning to the three large concrete structures that stood near the water. “Sergei—you know what to do.”

The wind from the sea pushed at the back of Luther’s parka as he turned, following Tony and Barry, walking more slowly than they managed. He could hear gigantic fans, ponderously turning in the vents, slowly sucking great volumes of air down into the Umbrella facility hidden far below.

Tony was a scowling American Latino who hadn’t shaved in a long while. It looked like there were a couple of fading gang tattoos on his neck. Luther envied the goggles he wore against the wind as he moved his power tools into place at the base of the first tower. Barry hunched down beside him, opening a pack of explosives as Luther walked up to stand near them, trying not to get in the way.

Hope to God they know what they’re doing with those plastic explosives,
Luther thought.
This would be a helluva place to be blown to pieces.

Sergei, carrying a laptop, flipped up a rusted metal hatch—which turned out to be camouflage for a state-of-the-art computer port. He plugged in his laptop, holding it up with one hand, typing with the other.

“Running a bypass,” he called out.

It’s like these guys have been breaking into secret facilities all their adult lives,
Luther thought, chuckling.

Maybe they have.

Moments later, Leon stepped up to Sergei, handing him a note with a string of numbers written on it. The precious data fluttered dangerously in the rising wind.

“These are the access codes Ada gave us,” he explained.

“You trust her?” Sergei asked, typing the codes in.

Leon smiled thinly.

“Just the numbers.”

Watching them wire the explosives to the bases of the vent towers, Luther wondered why they were necessary, if they were going in via an entrance other than the bunkers. Surely they weren’t there to blow open an entrance.

Maybe its part of the escape plan.
It looked to Luther as if Barry set the timer for two hours.

Two hours?
he thought—though he didn’t say anything.
That can’t be right, considering what we’re here to do.
Perhaps he’d read it wrong.

On the other hand, maybe the bombs would bring the whole place down on his head, long before he got out.

“Don’t suppose you want to tell me what these are for?” Luther said, nodding toward the explosives.

Barry finished pushing a wire into the block, then turned to stare quizzically at him.

Luther shrugged apologetically—not feeling it, though.

“I know, I know… I’m just an advisor.” He grinned.

The faintest flicker of a smile showed at the corners of Barry’s mouth.

“Listen, don’t get Leon wrong,” he said, keeping his voice low. “It’s not that he doesn’t like you. He just doesn’t know you.”

Luther nodded.

“And what about you?”

“Me?” Barry considered for a moment. “I just don’t like you.” He stood up, and walked away from the towers, moving toward the bunkers, leaving Luther to wonder if he’d been joking or not.

Giving up, he sighed and followed Barry over to the bunkers, where they joined Tony. Through a warped, yellowed window in a discolored steel door he could just make out rusted Soviet-era equipment that lay inside. There were hulking machines, some with huge pulleys, and he couldn’t tell what any of it was for.