Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [35]
That wasn't good. The only way the pair at the mansion would be incommunicado is if the security lock-down extended to the mansion. And that would only happen if things were totally disastrous.
No heat signatures meant probably nobody alive.
Five hundred dead employees definitely qualified as a disaster.
It was also possible that something had taken the ersatz married couple out. Cain had recruited Alice himself out of the Treasury Department, so he knew exactly what she was capable of. If someone or something had subdued her—well, that was disastrous, too.
"When did this happen?" he asked.
"Kaplan picked it up about fifteen minutes ago."
Knowing it was a stupid question—if One wasn't capable of thinking of this for himself, Cain wouldn't have hired him—he had to ask anyhow: "Can we get into the Red Queen to shut her down?"
"Kaplan's been trying, but she's also cut off from all externals. We can't get at her systems, processors—not even the surveillance cameras. Nothing. Only way to find out what's happening is to go in."
"The mansion's still open?"
"Yes."
"Not for much longer." Cain leaned back in his chair. This wasn't good. There was a lot of very important research going on in the Hive, but if any of it got out, there'd be hell to pay. The licker, the T-virus, the Nemesis Program, Project: Open Book—any one of them getting loose would be very bad for the corporation.
He immediately tapped some keys on the Umbrella laptop that sat to the right of the yellow phone on his desk, calling up the dossiers of who from One's staff was on duty today.
It was his primary team: the aforementioned Bart Kaplan, a former FBI agent, One's second, and the resident computer expert; Olga Danilova, their field medic, formerly with the Russian Army; and four soldiers, Vance Drew, J.D. Hawkins, Rain Melendez, and Alfonso Warner, recruited out of, respectively, the NYPD, the CIA by way of the Navy SEALs, the LAPD, and the federal penitentiary located just outside Raccoon City.
If anyone could find out what happened down there, it was them.
"You have a go," Cain said. "Procedure Three. You know the drill."
"Understood," One said without even a moment's hesitation. "We'll be airborne in ten."
That was one of the reasons why Cain liked One. He understood chain of command.
"Godspeed, One."
Cain hung up the yellow phone.
ELEVEN
HIS HANDS RAN GENTLY UP AND DOWN HER naked flesh, his callused fingers playing over her skin, feeling both rough and smooth at the same time.
His lips hungrily attacked hers, as if they were trying to consume each other. Their tongues explored—teasing, tasting, dancing.
He pulled her slim athletic form tight against his muscular body.
Nothing mattered right now but him as they rolled around the oh-so-comfortable mattress. Their bodies were intertwined, his arms wrapped around her torso, her legs wrapped around his waist.
She moaned in utmost ecstasy, as for the first time in years, she felt something. That's what had been missing for so long.
She never wanted it to end.
Eventually it did…
When she woke up, it was raining and her jaw hurt.
The images from her dream—was it a dream?—faded slowly. Something about a man and a bed, but she couldn't bring it into focus.
Or much of anything else.
The ground was cold against her sore jaw. She tried to prop herself up, only to feel a stabbing pain in her right shoulder.
She forced herself to focus, to take in her surroundings.
The first thing she realized was that the ground was cold because it wasn't ground. It was marble.
The rain was only coming down on her feet. It was the steady rhythm of a shower.
Gently rubbing her right shoulder with her left hand, she looked down. Aside from a crumpled shower curtain—which, based on the bent metal hooks along one end of it, had been ripped off the rod—she was naked.
Obviously something had happened in the shower.
But what?
Her need to figure out what was going on led her to another stunning revelation.
She had no idea who she was.
Taking a deep breath,