Genesis - Keith R. A. DeCandido [74]
Those same eyes that gazed longingly up at him—or down at him, depending—when he finally did get her in the sack.
Now, those eyes only held a promise that, given half a chance, she'd kick his ass instead of compliment him on it.
Well, her tough shit. He had the gun.
"I'm missin' you already."
He moved back through the door and shut it.
Then he shot out the locking mechanism.
With any luck, Melendez would die and eat the other two alive. Then it'd all be cleaned up. No witnesses, no trace of what happened to the virus.
And Spence home free to sell his newfound acquisition.
First, though, he needed to inject some of the green stuff into his own bloodstream, now that he was infected. But that would be a simple matter—and he could spare it. After all, because he broke one of the virus vials when he infected the Hive, he had an uneven number, so using the anti-virus on himself wasn't much of a big deal.
For the second time that day, he ran toward the upper levels of the Hive to make his escape.
Twenty-Five
MATT SUPPOSED HE SHOULD'VE BEEN RELIEVED that Alice wasn't the bad guy here, that Lisa's instincts had been correct to trust her, but finding out that it was Spence who was singlehandedly responsible for this entire nightmare made him sick to his stomach.
Or, rather, sicker.
Alice threw off her jacket. Matt remembered that it was actually Spence's jacket, given to her outside this very lab to keep her warm.
He went over to the door and tried to pull the handle so it would open. It didn't work.
"Your boyfriend's a real asshole," Rain muttered.
"He shot the locking mechanism out." Matt gave up on the door and turned to face the two women. "I can't believe that son of a bitch is gonna get away with this."
"I don't think so."
All three of them turned to look at the monitor that was now lit up with the Umbrella logo. A speaker near the monitor sounded with the child voice of the Red Queen.
"I've been a bad bad girl."
Matt watched as the monitor provided a view of Spence running up the stairs to the train station.
The view switched to that of an overhead security camera located right by the train itself, which was right where they'd left it several lifetimes ago. Spence went to the train, opened the outer door to the same closet J.D. had found him in. He pulled out a duffel bag, unzipped it, then removed a shiny metal case that had four circles in the four corners and a codepad.
Entering a code into the pad, the four circles all turned, and then the top slid open.
A smile of relief spread over Spence's face. Matt wished he could say the same for himself. That was the case Alice had been planning to steal and give to Lisa—and which Lisa was going to give to him.
The T-virus.
The motherlode.
The means through which Matt and Aaron and the rest of them were finally going to expose Umbrella.
Matt ground his teeth. He had to get out of here somehow and get that fucking case!
Spence wrapped a strap around his biceps, tapped his arms to bring up a vein, then prepared the hypo-gun for an injection.
Before he finished, though, he stopped and looked up. It appeared as if he'd heard something.
Then some—thing fell from the ceiling and ate Spence alive.
Matt had a vivid imagination, fueled by reading too many comic books when he was a kid, not to mention some of the vile and depraved acts he saw while working the Federal Marshal's office.
But this—this was so far beyond the pale as to be in another hemisphere. In his wildest dreams, he couldn't imagine anything as revolting as this.
Whatever the thing was, it looked like a cross between a rhino and a human. The skin was corded and plated, with horns sticking out of various spots. It had opposable thumbs, but huge claws sticking out of its fingers and toes.
It had a tongue as long as a snake, and it had more teeth than a piranha.
Those teeth were chowing down on Spence right now.
Then it turned its head up toward the camera.
Whatever that thing was, it didn't have any eyes.
Matt's determination to bring down Umbrella prior to today was