Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [34]
Cain learned many things in the desert, but the most important thing was that, contrary to what Father had always taught him, life was neither precious nor sacred.
Life was, in fact, cheap.
If life was such a glorious, magnificent, wonderful thing, then it wouldn't be so easy to take it away.
If life was a great gift, then he wouldn't be able to kill a fellow human being with one hand, as he did often in the Persian Gulf.
When his tour ended, he went to OCS to get his commission.
After several more years as an officer, he realized another important truth: there was more to life than the military.
That truth didn't so much come from plowing through the desert and blowing up the enemy, something at which he had frankly excelled. No, this truth came from the gentlemen in suits who worked for the Umbrella Corporation and recruited him to run their Security Division. "Able" Cain had served his country. In a sense, he still would be, for Umbrella had many government contracts, and provided services for Americans everywhere.
The main difference was that now he'd be recompensed with an obscene amount of money.
Having achieved the rank of major, Cain said yes, though he insisted that he still be referred to by his rank. He was also able to buy Father a house in Florida. When Michael was shot in the line of duty, and was going slowly insane at a desk job, Timothy made him the head of security for Umbrella's Chicago office. He tracked Anthony down in a crackhouse in Berkeley and got him cleaned up, paying for his detox. (That he later jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge was hardly Cain's fault.)
When Mary learned her husband was cheating on her, Cain paid for her divorce lawyer. Then, after the divorce was finalized, and Mary had taken the bastard for all he was worth and then some, Cain tracked the ex-husband down—living in a shitty little studio apartment in South Bend, Indiana—and shot him in the head.
Life was, after all, easy to take. But it was so much more satisfying to destroy someone first.
Timothy "Able" Cain brought a military efficiency to Umbrella. When Edgardo Martinez retired as head of Umbrella's "sanitation" strike team, Cain recommended an old friend that he'd met during his days in Special Forces to take his place. The man had spent his career to that point in a variety of covert operations positions. His given name was lost to obscurity and dozens of clandestine missions. When he took the job, he went with the codename "One." It simplifed things, he said.
One did his job superbly. He had a team of commandoes that he'd hand-picked and hand-trained. He had pulled them from a variety of sources—police departments, the armed forces, jailhouses—and molded them into an enviable fighting force.
The yellow phone on Cain's desk was a direct line from One. It only rang when there was trouble.
It rang now.
Cain felt no trepidation as he picked it up, because Cain hadn't felt trepidation since he enlisted in the Army. As a teenager, sure, he felt trepidation all the time—he was in a new country, his skin was breaking out, he struggled with homework, he had difficulty with the language—but once he reached the desert, he never feared anything again.
Because he knew the secret.
Life was cheap.
"What's happening?" he asked as he picked up the phone.
One's deep, steady voice sounded on the other end. "The Hive's shut down."
Cain leaned forward in his comfortable leather chair, leaning his elbows on his oak desk. "What do you mean it's shut down?"
"Just what I said. Security measures have taken effect. No heat signatures. We're cut off from the entire complex. It's been locked down,