Resident Evil - Genesis Part 23

She heard a single gunshot.

Braver sonofab.i.t.c.h than she thought.

Now she was the only one left.

Twenty-Three.

ALICE FORCED HERSELF NOT TO THINK ABOUT the gunshot she'd just heard.

As she crawled along the vent shaft, she tried desperately to banish the last image of Bart Kaplan she had: him putting the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

Part of her was angry at him for taking such a coward's way out. On the other hand, he had been bitten by those things, and they were coming after him.

At least by shooting himself in the head, he guaranteed he wouldn't be resurrected by the virus.

But she forced herself not to think about it.

The shaft dead-ended under a grate. She looked at Matt and Spence, who were right behind her.

No words were exchanged, nor had they been since they left Kaplan behind.

Getting into a squatting position, Alice slowly stood upright, pus.h.i.+ng the grate slowly upward.

It opened into one of the corridors.

One thankfully short on undead employees of the Umbrella Corporation.

She came out first, holding Rain's gun at the ready. Spence was right behind her.

"Come on," Spence called down to Matt and Rain.

Matt climbed out first, then reached down to Rain.

"Give me your arm."

A limp, sweat-and-blood-covered arm reached up. He grabbed it and pulled. Rain managed to stumble out.

"Now up over my shoulder."

Even as she did what he said, she fell forward and threw up.

To his credit, Matt didn't bat an eyelash. He just waited for her to stop.

"Thanks." Rain's voice was even more ragged. It was amazing that she was still holding on. "Sorry I slapped you around back at the mansion."

Matt smiled. "It's all right. I probably had it coming. Just hold on."

Alice s.h.i.+vered. She wondered if Rain would be so accommodating if she knew the truth about Matt.

Right now, though, none of that mattered. All that was relevant right now was that no one else was going to die. Not if she had anything to say about it.

There was something.

Something she was starting to remember.

It was about the colors blue and green, of all things. It had been niggling her in the back of the head, but she'd dismissed it as another bit of trivial information that wouldn't come to her, like what a bathrobe was called.

Now, though, she was sure that those two colors were critically important.

Spence, meanwhile, went over to help Matt with Rain, even as Alice continued to scout ahead.

So far, the corridor was clear.

She wondered how long that would last.

From behind her, she heard Rain's voice.

"When I get outta here-I think I'm gonna get laid."

Spence chuckled.

"Yeah," Matt said dryly. "You might want to clean up a bit first."

Alice was about to laugh, too, but then it caught in her throat.

She knew this corridor.

And she knew the lab she was standing next to, looking into the window of.

"You okay?" Matt asked. She turned to see that Matt had left Rain with Spence to check up on her. She must have gone vacant for a second.

Blue. Green. Blue and green.

And rabbits.

Then it all came back. In her mind's eye she could clearly see Mariano Rodriguez and Anna Bolt injecting a white rabbit with a hypo-gun. The rabbit was named Daffy for some reason Alice couldn't remember. The hypo was loaded with a corkscrew-shaped tube containing two different color liquids.

One blue. One green.

"Blue for virus, green for the anti-virus."

Matt gave her a funny look.

"There's a cure," she said.

"What're you talking about?" Matt asked, sounding confused.

"There's a cure cure. The process can be reversed." She turned and looked at Rain, still held up by Spence down the corridor. "There's a cure! You're going to be okay."

Rain actually smiled. "I was beginning to worry."

Alice ran into the lab. The entrance was at the top of a raised entry way, with a short staircase leading down to the main part of the lab. The unsealing of the doors when Kaplan powered the. Red Queen down had reduced the flooding down to the level of the raised entry-way, so the room was still knee-deep in water.

This was where Mariano and Anna had worked, along with their lab a.s.sistant, a big bald guy whose name Alice couldn't remember.

They were the ones working on the T-virus.

With a start, Alice realized that she'd seen all of them. Anna was the corpse whose presence floating in this very lab had scared Matt when they first arrived. The bald lab a.s.sistant had been one of the ones who first attacked them in the so-called dining hall. And Mariano had been one of the ones trying to kill Kaplan in the tunnel.

Jesus.

"This is where they kept the T-virus."

"How do you know all this?" Matt asked.

She decided to go for broke. Besides, Matt deserved to know.

"Because I was going to steal it." She turned to look at him. "I was your sister's contact."

Mart's eyes went wide. "You betrayed her."

"I don't know."

"You caused all this."

"I can't remember."

She started to move down the staircase, but Matt grabbed her arm.

"The truth."

"I don't remember don't remember the truth," she said honestly. the truth," she said honestly.

But she found she couldn't look Matt in the eyes, either.

Instead, she turned and proceeded down the stairs.

She remembered it now. The door on the far end of the room had the vault that held the T-virus.

Wading through the sprinkler-system water, she was, for the first time since the mansion, eternally grateful for the thigh-high boots, as they kept her mostly protected from the frigidly cold knee-high water.

The door leading to the vault required both hands to get open, so-since the dress had no pockets, nor did she have a holster-she set Rain's gun down on a table that was above the water line.

Behind her, Matt guided Rain down to sit down on the dry entryway, legs hanging over into the main lab.

Spence, meanwhile, waded down the stairs.

Alice yanked the door open.

She saw the far wall, and the PlastiGlas window that gave a view into the containment unit. Over it were the levers to manipulate the waldoes that manipulated the vials inside. Underneath the window was the slot that allowed one access to the contents.

The slot was open.

Inside, the container for the T-virus was empty.

All fourteen slots were empty.

Slamming her hands on the open containment unit, Alice cried, "I don't understand understand."

She waded back outside and looked at Rain. "It's gone. It's gone, it's not there."

Rain seemed to deflate before Alice's very eyes. "I can't. I just can't."

Alice had been so sure so sure, dammit.

Was it somewhere else? In the mansion somewhere, maybe? Could they get back there in time?

As she walked over to comfort Rain, she wondered what they would do next.

Twenty-Four.

SPENCE PARKS LOOKED AT THE OPEN DOOR, saw the empty vault- -and remembered.

He'd been biding his time for weeks, getting the plan together. From the minute he heard about the T-virus from one of the other guys in Security, he started his inquiries. Naturally, he kept it all subtle. It didn't do to arouse suspicions, and the people at Umbrella were d.a.m.ned suspicious.

So he took his time. First he got the security codes. Then he got a buyer lined up.

The question was whether or not to involve Alice.

There was a lot to like about Alice. She was tough, strong, single-minded, brilliant-and the best lay he'd ever had. G.o.d, she was like an acrobat in combat, and she was like an acrobat in bed.

Spence had had many women in his life-it was why he became a cop, initially. His uncle was a cop, and he always said, "Spence, it's the best f.u.c.kin' job in the world. You get to sit in a car all day and you get all the p.u.s.s.y you could ever want." In that, he was prophetic, but his dear old uncle neglected to mention that the s.e.xual perks only partly made up for the severe lack of monetary ones.

But greed begat greed, and even the huge sums Umbrella paid him didn't satisfy him.

The quality of the p.u.s.s.y increased tremendously, though. h.e.l.l, living in a big mansion for free, getting to have s.e.x with Alice pretty much any time he wanted-this was the life.