Resident Evil. Retribution (9 page)

Sergei unplugged his laptop, and he looked pleased.

“We’re in!” he announced.

Meaning what?
Luther wondered. The door was still shut, and looked rusted into place.
How
are we
getting in?

The answer came a moment later, when the snow that had drifted between two of the concrete bunkers began to move from below. Before his eyes the ground was opening up, as huge panels yawned wide to reveal a deep, silo-shaped shaft extending straight down into the ground, hundreds of yards into the shadows. There were four open-air elevator platforms attached to the shaft’s walls.

Luther sighed—quietly enough that the others wouldn’t hear.

“Elevators… I hate elevators.” He stared down the shaft. It was relatively new; the platforms weren’t rusty. “The Soviets didn’t build this,” he said.

“Umbrella built it,” Barry replied. “The old Soviet shell is just more masking.”

“Come on,” Leon said. He led the way onto the nearest elevator platform—it was large, enough so to carry supplies, even vehicles. Luther stepped gingerly onto it, wondering what had happened to the concept of
walls.

The rest of the team studied the bottom of the platform, and he heard a series of clicks as they attached something to the metal. Then they joined him on the platform, standing close to the curved wall. Luther could feel warm air rising from below. Leon pressed a button on a control pedestal.

The elevator shuddered, causing every muscle in Luther’s body to tense. It grumbled mechanically, and began to move slowly downward. He patted the machine gun pistol he had under his coat. He had a strong feeling he’d be using it.

Hope I brought enough ammo.

As they sank into the shaft, the bright Arctic sky— lit by the midnight sun—receded until it was a distant circle of light, far above. And still they descended.

“Synchronize watches,” Leon said. “Two hours exactly in three, two, one…”

Two hours till the explosives went off.

One hour, fifty-nine minutes, fifty seconds. Forty-nine seconds… Forty eight seconds…

“Why don’t we just trigger the explosives remotely?” Luther asked.
When we’re safely out of the damn place.

“Can’t risk them jamming the signal,” Leon countered as he checked that his combat rifle was loaded.

Luther shook his head. These guys were professional badasses, working for people he didn’t know—and they liked to play with timed explosives.

What the hell have I got myself into?

He sure would like to see Alice again, though. Now
there
was a woman. “Amazing” didn’t even begin to cover it. So he glanced at his watch again.

“And what if we take longer than two hours?”

“Then,” Barry said, a little too matter-of-factly, “I hope you’re good at holding your breath.”

Just then they reached the bottom of the silo, where the elevator entered a much smaller vertical tube, hardly big enough for the platform. An echoing darkness closed over them.

“Into the rabbit hole,” Leon said.

In the Umbrella control room, Wesker’s image had disappeared from the screens. Ada Wong checked her watch. Standing nearby, Alice could see the reading.

01.58.01 - 01:58:00 - 01:57:59
- Something that was going to happen in two hours. Something critical…

“They’re in,” Ada said. Then she was staring straight ahead, as if at nothing. Suddenly Alice realized that her spectacle lenses were a heads-up display. If she looked carefully she could see minutely projected data on the edges. There was a wire-frame 3D map of some kind. Probably the facility layout, and perhaps their escape route.

Ada nodded to herself and looked at her companion.

“The strike team will eliminate Umbrella resistance, then rendezvous with us and escort us out.”

“How considerate,” Alice said, glancing at the window; the crystalline shine of the blue-green floes; the inverted mountains of icebergs.

“They have a friend of yours with them,” Ada said. “Luther West.”

Alice felt a pleasant shock go through her on hearing that name.

“He’s alive!”

Ada nodded.

“We picked him up in Los Angeles. He saw them capture you at the
Arcadia…
that’s how we knew Umbrella had you.”

“How’d you find him?”

“Pretty easy to pick out the humans from the Undead, from the air. We talked to him. He was on the shore, saw the V-22s hammer the
Arcadia.
And he knew that’s where you’d gone. Saw you with binoculars when they pulled you from the water. Your interests and ours converge, now—and we figured he would give us a sense of how to deal with you.

“He insisted on coming along in exchange, so…” She shrugged.

“And you tracked the V-22s to here?”

“Yes. To—Umbrella Prime.”

Alice considered demanding to know the full scope of her agenda—and Wesker’s—but they’d probably just mislead her, if she did that. If she remained patient, however, they might reveal more than they intended…

“So, do we wait right here for your extraction team?”

Ada glanced at her watch.

“We wait till time to move out, and rendezvous with them. We can’t wait long…”

Auto pistol in hand, Jill strode across the life-size model of Tokyo’s Shibuya Scramble, leading her squad toward the enormous false front of the “109 Department Store.” The cars had gone, but she knew there were living dead out here, left over from the unauthorized scenario that someone had run earlier.

“Heat readings are stronger,” Carlyle said, looking at the small screen of the infrared tracker. “We’re getting close. Looks like they’re in the control center.”

Jill grunted. This was not good. It would explain the lack of response from Control, though.

She glanced at the readings—the shape of the footprints had changed.

“She’s put on some boots, if that’s her…”

There was a faint false drizzle, coming down from the water works in the ceiling. Peering around, Jill puzzled at the way they maintained these urban representations. The people they used, artificial though they might be, were unwitting pawns, oblivious as to what was destined to happen to them. What did the corporation tell them, she wondered, right before it all went down?

“This is just an acting job. Pretend you’re going about your life, that’s all…”

But that wasn’t her department. She was in security, intel, and enforcement. Umbrella worked in mysterious ways, and Jill wasn’t to question it. The scarab assured her of that.

“Heads up!” trooper Carlyle shouted. “Undead moving in!”

Jill sighed as she swung her auto pistol into position. Maybe they should’ve taken the long way, so they didn’t have to deal with this. But the squad were heavily armed—and the Undead were pretty much idiots. Dangerous idiots, but idiots.

She didn’t have to waste ammo on the skinny black man who came rushing at them—Carlyle shot him through the head and he went down. Blood splashed from the fallen creature’s shattered skull, spattering Jill’s boots.

She’d just polished them that morning.

Instead she tracked her pistol over to an Undead who’d been a grandmotherly-looking elderly Japanese lady in traditional Asian garb—eyes glazed milky white, the Undead grandma was howling wordlessly as she charged, her face contorted like a kabuki demon.

Jill’s first burst caught the woman in the teeth— but too low. Though the creature staggered back a little, she soon recovered and came at Jill again. Annoyed, she squeezed off a quick burst, blowing the Undead’s brains out. It flopped at her feet.

She stepped over the mess, continuing to lead the squad across the open Scramble, tracking for another target—but the rest of her team was taking care of business.

“Grenade out!” Carlyle shouted. Jill tossed the explosive toward the rear of the oncoming group, blowing six of them to kingdom come. The others dispatched their targets skillfully, their long practice at headshots taking out the Undead almost as efficiently as a lawnmower would cut down weeds.

There were a few more of the creatures staggering around, but they were stumbling over the corpses of the fallen, and the squad had reached the 109.

The entrance was still open wide, and they headed inside…

“Look at this!” Alice said, pointing.

On a computer monitor, a surveillance camera showed Jill Valentine and her squad, moving along the corridor that led to the control room.

“They’re headed this way,” Ada said. She had locked the door and scrambled the unlock code—but there were other ways to get through it.

Framed in the monitor, Jill stared up at the security camera, right into the lens, as if guessing that Alice was watching her. She could see the high-tech scarab on Jill’s chest. So that was it—that was why she was working for Umbrella. Why she’d interrogated Alice…

They had her mind-controlled.

A squad trooper stepped up to the door. Taking a power tool off her belt, she began cutting at the metal. Sparks flew, and when Alice and Ada glanced at their side of the barrier, smoke appeared. Their pursuers were cutting their way through.

Alice looked at Ada questioningly.

Ada glanced at the countdown timer on her wrist, and nodded.

“Let’s move!” Alice declared.

Ada walked over to the workstations where corpses of trooper techs still drooped in their seats. She grabbed two by their collars, pulled them out of their seats, pushed the bodies aside and signaled to Alice with a jerk of her head.

Following the motion, Alice stepped next to one of the empty the workstation chairs. She watched as Ada tapped the controls, making her own unit sink through the floor.

The hole in the door was larger now, burning, expanding… which meant it was time to fight or go. No reason to risk the fight—yet—and Alice really didn’t want to kill Jill. Her friend had no control over herself, no real choice, as long as that device clung to her chest…

So Alice duplicated Ada’s input on the controls, and her workstation panel sank into a square shaft, descending into the floor. In a matter of seconds she was in an entirely different room.

The cutting tool severed the final metal rod of the locking mechanism, and the steel door opened. Two troopers entered ahead of their commander, as per protocol.

“Rooms clear!” one shouted.

“Secured!” the other echoed.

Gun in hand, Jill Valentine walked into the Control Room. All but two of the workstations were there, and all of its occupants were dead—corpses slumping at the consoles. One of the troopers slid her helmet off.

“No sign of them,” the trooper, Rain, said.

“Then check surveillance,” Jill ordered.

“On it,” a second trooper replied. He took off his helmet, revealing African-American features, and checked the dead Umbrella troopers slain at their workstations. “Single shot. Assassination style.” Whoever had shot them, Jill reflected, must have caught them by surprise—and must have been damned good at shooting quickly and accurately.

The black trooper rewound the surveillance footage, stopping when it showed Alice and Ada Wong in the control room.

“She was here. And she had help.”

He rewound the footage further, to show troopers manning their control stations. Ada Wong entered, unnoticed by them all. With rapid-fire precision she killed them, one bullet through each mask’s goggles, with no emotion showing on her face at all. It was over in seconds.

As the tape moved forward again, it showed Alice and Ada’s confrontation, and the appearance of Wesker on the screens. Jill’s scarab saw what she saw—it communicated with a central computer, and projected an HUD display onto her eyesight.

ADA WONG.

CLASSIFIED: RENEGADE.

ALBERT WESKER.

CLASSIFIED: RENEGADE.

“Ada Wong,” Jill said. “That’s our traitor. When Wesker went rogue, she must’ve joined him.”

“That’s not all,” said the trooper with Rain’s face. She pointed to another screen. On it, Leon and his team clearly visible. “Intruders! Just leaving the submarine pens. They’re headed for the test floor.”

“They’re here to help our prisoner,” Jill said. “Trooper—”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Arrange a little welcome party for our guests.”

“Very good, ma’am.

As they moved to obey, Jill peered intently at the two gaping holes in the floor, where the two missing workstations had been.

The lower control room boasted low ceilings, walls made out of reinforced metal, and no windows. There were slots for the workstations, and additional equipment hummed on one wall.

Alice crouched at the workstation, not daring to move. But it had grown too quiet up above…

Just as she darted away, a burst of bullets smashed into the console—they’d have nailed her head if she hadn’t moved. Pieces of monitor, bits of wire, and spark-inflected smoke burst from the computer. She looked up and saw a trooper’s mask peering down from the slot in the ceiling, and she fired a burst from her assault rifle. The masked face jerked back—Alice wasn’t sure if she’d hit her target or not.

Then she heard a familiar voice calling down from above.

“Alice—surrender and we’ll promise you won’t be—”

But then the ceiling panel closed, cutting off the speaker. In the dim light, Alice saw Ada pulling away from a switch.

“Where now?” Alice asked as she picked pieces of shattered monitor glass from her right cheek.

Ada headed toward the back of the room.

“Right through here…
fast
,” Ada said, scooping up a tool of some sort. “Before they blow that ceiling panel open. We don’t want to go in the lower corridor, she’ll have troops moving into place out there.”

Alice followed her to a corner where Ada used the tool to unscrew bolts on a metal trap door. Once the bolts were released, the door swung back automatically, and the two of them descended, climbing down a steel ladder into a diffused red light…

A huge vaulted stone chamber carved out of the living rock was one of the facility’s few reminders of its Soviet origins. The drafty chamber was dominated by Cyrillic lettering painted high on the walls—which no member of Umbrella Squad Seventeen could read, though they all stared up at it as they entered.