Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [106]
But no, a van was coming. That meant more people. That meant there was hope.
Jill left the conference room for her next task. She had work to do.
Albert Wesker sat at the head of the conference-room table in Umbrella’s Japanese headquarters. Surrounding him at the table were holograms of the remaining members of the Committee.
Dr. Sam Isaacs was conspicuous by his absence, as was his theoretical replacement, Alexander Slater.
Adjusting his sunglasses, Wesker said to the others, “All attempts to contact the North American complex continue to fail.”
Colin Wainwright’s hologram made a tch noise. “How long have they been off the air?”
“Seventy-two hours. We must consider them lost. But our plans remain unchanged. All data have been transferred to this facility, and the research will continue under my personal supervision.”
In retrospect, he should have done this in the first place. Wesker had assumed Isaacs to be a rational, intelligent person. He now realized that Isaacs had only seemed that way in comparison to the man he’d replaced, Timothy Cain. However, while Isaacs lacked Cain’s fundamental inability to think a plan through, he more than made up for it in personal ambition. Cain was loyal to the company but also spectacularly incompetent. Isaacs was supercompetent but loyal only to himself. Wesker had hoped that Slater would have neither of those defects, but that seemed to be a dead issue.
He continued: “I expect results within one month, two at the mo—”
“Oh, you won’t have to wait that long, boys.”
Wesker frowned. That voice didn’t belong to any of the Committee members—who, for their part, looked just as confused as he felt.
Then a hologram appeared in the seat that had been Isaacs’s and was supposed to have been Slater’s.
The image was of Alice Abernathy.
Somehow Wesker just knew that this was the orignal Project Alice. It seemed Isaacs had been correct in that his sixty-two-percent match was the original. Unfortunately, it seemed that Isaacs had tragically underestimated the power of his hold on her.
Alice was smiling. “You see, I’m coming for you, and I’m going to be bringing a few friends.”
She looked over at the large screen on the north wall. Wesker followed her gaze.
The screen lit up with Alice sitting in a chair in a wrecked laboratory. Behind her was another woman who looked just like her.
Behind them were dozens of tanks, all containing clones of Alice.
Hundreds.
Wesker’s authorization was only for one hundred Alice clones. Eighty-seven of them had failed, so there should have been only thirteen left.
From what Wesker could see, there may well have been thirteen hundred clones of Alice, all with her enhanced ability.
And now, apparently, all under the direction of their source.
Alice smiled. “Have a nice day, boys.”
Her image winked out.
TO BE CONTINUED…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Keith R.A. DeCandido returns to the world of Resident Evil with Extinction, having novelized Resident Evil: Genesis and Resident Evil: Apocalypse in 2004. His other novelizations include Serenity, Darkness Falls, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Xander Years Volume 1, and Gargantua. He’s written tons of novels, short stories, and eBooks based on video games (World of War-craft, StarCraft, Command and Conquer), television shows (Star Trek in all its incarnations, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Doctor Who, CSI: NY Farscape, Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda), comic books (Spider-Man, X-Men, the Hulk, the Silver Surfer), and more. He’s also a veteran anthologist; the editor in charge of the monthly Star Trek eBook line; a professional percussionist, having performed with the Boogie Knights, the Randy Bandits, and the Don’t Quit Your Day Job Players, both onstage and in the studio; and a practitioner of Kenshikai karate. Find out less about Keith at his official website at www.DeCandido.net, or read his inane ramblings at kradical.livejournal.com.
Table of Contents
PART ONE
BEFORE AND AFTER
ONE
BEFORE
TWO
AFTER
THREE
BEFORE
FOUR
AFTER
FIVE