Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [64]
Rain and Spence had also followed her and Kaplan in. "That homicidal bitch killed my team," Rain said angrily.
As calm as Rain was furious, Alice said, "That homicidal bitch may be our only way out of here."
Spence's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Considering the way she's been treated, I'm sure she's gonna be real happy to help us out."
Alice ignored him and slid the motherboard into its slot. Without looking at him, she asked Kaplan, "That circuit breaker you were talking about—can you bypass it?"
"Yeah," Kaplan said, sounding confused.
"So do it."
As Alice finished off her work, Kaplan went over to one of the other parts of the CPU and entered some codes, then pulled out a remote control.
"All right, circuit breaker's disabled. This time, if I hit the switch, she won't be able to shut down." He looked around at everyone. "She's gonna fry."
Rain actually gave him something resembling a comradely nod at that. Considering Kaplan was half expecting her to put a bullet into his brain for getting One and the rest of them killed, he considered this a good sign.
Maybe she, like Kaplan, was realizing that this whole fucking situation was way beyond the pale.
As soon as Alice slid the motherboard into place, the computer rebooted, the lights came on, and the red-tinged hologram of a ten-year-old girl appeared.
Then the hologram futzed out.
"Kaplan?" Alice asked, glaring at him.
Blinking twice, Kaplan said, "The initial charge must have damaged her board."
"Good," Spence muttered.
"Ah, there you are."
Kaplan looked around, then noticed the speaker in one corner of the room. The voice was the same as before, but without the visual of the ten-year-old girl.
All things considered, Kaplan was just as happy with that. He'd met Angie Ashford once, and seeing her as the template for the Red Queen's AI had always given him the creeps.
"Things, I gather, have gone out of control."
Rain lunged for Kaplan. "Give me that fucking switch, I'm gonna fry her ass."
Alice and Matt both grabbed her arms, and pulled her away, for which Kaplan was grateful.
"I did warn you, didn't I?"
"Tell us what the hell is going on down here," Rain said, moving away from Alice and Matt, but not menacing Kaplan anymore, either.
"Research and development."
Kaplan almost smiled. It may have sounded like a little girl, it may have been the best AI since HAL 9000, but it was still a literal-minded computer. Garbage in, garbage out. Ask a direct question, get a direct answer.
"What about the T-virus?" Matt asked.
Now Kaplan shot the cop a look. What the hell was he talking about?
"The T-virus was a major medical breakthrough, although it clearly possessed highly profitable military applications."
Suddenly, things were starting to make a sick sort of sense. If there was some kind of virus, maybe that was what responsible for the Zombie Jamboree out there. Kaplan wondered what Matt Addison knew about it.
And if he was really a cop.
But that could wait. First, he wanted to know what was happening. So he asked another literal-minded question. "How does it explain those things out there?"
"Even in death, the human body still remains active. Hair and fingernails continue to grow, new cells are produced, and the brain itself holds a small electrical charge that takes months to dissipate. The T-virus provides a massive jolt both to cellular growth and to those trace electrical impulses. Put quite simply, it reanimates the body."
Rain frowned. "It brings the dead back to life?"
"Not fully. The subjects have the simplest of motor functions. Perhaps a little memory, virtually no intelligence. They are driven by the basest of impulses, the most basic of needs."
"Which is?" Kaplan asked, even though he suspected what the answer was, and didn't entirely think that he wanted it confirmed.
"The need to feed."
"And this was being developed on purpose?" Alice sounded aghast, which indicated to Kaplan that she hadn't gotten all her memory back. This was pretty much par for Umbrella's course, though even Kaplan