Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [50]
Fifteen
SO FAR SO GOOD.
Days like this, One felt proud of the work he'd done here. Most of the time, providing security for Umbrella felt like a waste of his considerable talents. He'd survived the jungles of South America, the killing fields of Eastern Europe, and the deserts of the Middle East. He'd done and seen things that would make most people either suicidal or homicidal—or both. Or, at the very least, sick to their stomachs.
The fact that he did all of these things in the service of his country was one of the reasons why he took Major Cain up on his offer to join the private sector. Not so much that he didn't like the work, but he needed a change. He'd done the work for half a dozen different presidential administrations, all with theoretically different ideologies, but all in need of people like One who could get things done without anybody knowing about it. It wasn't a boast for One to say that he'd kept the world safe for democracy—hell, safe for humanity—on more than one occasion, but he also knew that the very people he'd saved would never know what he did.
That got tiresome.
Besides, Umbrella paid better than the government. Not that money was of great concern—he did the work because he was good at it, and really only took the money because that was how the world worked. He had no real use for the money. Still, better to have it than not, he supposed.
Now, he and his team were in precisely the kind of situation he reveled in: unpredictable, unknown parameters, x-factors like Parks's and Abernathy's amnesia and that cop, and curve balls like the dining hall that wasn't a dining hall.
Throughout, his team remained calm, cool, professional, competent.
He expected no less, but that didn't mean he wasn't glad when it happened. The situation had been anything but textbook, but his team's response had been perfectly by the book.
That was the only way to accomplish anything.
Warner, Drew, and Danilova came in, the former two carrying the duffel with the EMP. They'd shut the Queen down, pull out the motherboard, and then they could go home.
Then the vault door closed.
One turned around to see that the outer door had also closed and locked.
The four of them were locked in the corridor.
Warner and Drew dropped the duffel and pulled out their rifles even as One called into his PRC, "Kaplan!"
Kaplan's voice came over the tiny speaker. "Some kind of dormant defense mechanism." One could have worked that one out on his own. "We must have tripped it when we opened the door."
"Put it back to sleep."
"Working on it."
Kaplan sounded panicky. One gritted his teeth. Kaplan was a good soldier, but he had a blind spot when technical problems didn't go his way.
One backed up slowly, joining up with Warner, Drew, and Danilova, figuring they were safer bunched together than spread out.
"Hold your positions." More for Kaplan's benefit than the others', he added, "Everyone stay calm."
"What's that?"
At Warner's words, One turned to see a thin white beam of light that extended horizontally across the length of the corridor right in front of the door to the Queen's chamber.
A laser.
Then it started moving toward them.
"Down!" One cried, pushing Drew, who was closest, down with him. To his credit, Warner ducked on his own. One couldn't see how Danilova reacted, and there wasn't time to check.
Instinctively trying to keep his balance, Drew thrust his right arm up as One knocked him over. That turned out to be a nasty mistake: the laser sliced right through the fingers of his gun hand, causing his rifle and the tips of his fingers to fall to the floor.
Drew grabbed his right wrist with his left hand and started screaming in agony.
To One's initial surprise, Drew's finger stumps weren't bleeding. Then, after only half a second, he realized that they wouldn't be. The laser was not only hot enough to cleanly slice through whatever it encountered, but also enough to cauterize any wound.
"Medic!" One cried.
He looked up to see why Danilova hadn't responded. To his utter amazement, she was just standing there