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On the far wall, several screens showed footage of cities around the globe: London, Paris, Lisboa, Amsterdam, København, Antananarivo, Srinagar, Tokyo, Beijing, Berlin, Moscova, Johannesberg, New Delhi. All of them were being overrun by the undead in much the same way Raccoon City and San Francisco had been years ago.

As ever, Isaacs blamed Cain.

“Gentlemen,” he said as he walked in. Heads all turned.

Or, rather, the illusion of heads. While Isaacs saw the faces of all eight of Umbrella’s division heads, as well as that of Chairman Wesker, he knew that none of them was actually in the room. Every Umbrella facility had a meeting room just like this one, and they were all showing the same information on the holograph above the table and the screens on the wall. They also all appeared to have the same eight people sitting around the table, and they all saw an image of Isaacs and Slater walking into the room.

The Holography Department had done its work well. Travel was too risky these days, and while it was difficult to coordinate a meeting that would occur across assorted time zones, that was preferable to risking the lives of the corporation’s most important people.

Wesker looked over at Isaacs. At least, Isaacs assumed he did. It was hard to tell, as the chairman insisted on wearing mirror shades at all times. Wesker still wore the same crew cut he’d affected as a Marine, he still had multiple scars from that time, and Isaacs wondered if he wore the shades because of some ocular affliction or if he was just a pretentious ass.

If there were still money in this world, Isaacs would have bet all of it on the latter.

“How good of the Science Division to join us,” Wesker said dryly.

Isaacs heard Slater exhale through his teeth, but he ignored it as he ignored most of what came out of Slater’s mouth. He simply said, “I have been busy.”

Wesker lowered his shades and stared at Isaacs with a penetrating pair of eyes, leading Isaacs to understand a bit more why he wore them. “That’s most interesting, Doctor, because we were just about to discuss the results of your ‘experiments’—or, rather, the lack of them.”

“Is that so?” Isaacs asked, for lack of anything better to say. He’d been expecting something like this, which was why he hadn’t been eager to show up on time for the meeting in the first place.

Wainwright spoke next. “On the subject of the biohazard, what does the Science Division have to report?”

Not for the first time, Isaacs marveled at his employers’ capacity for making the appalling sound commonplace, though he wondered who, precisely, they were trying to impress at this point. “Biohazard” sounded as if someone had been putting anthrax through the postal system or a flu strain was going around. The T-virus was several orders of magnitude worse than a “biohazard.”

But then, Wainwright had a much bigger population of living humans left to be concerned with. Europe and Asia were still comparatively well off—while the Americas, Africa, and Australia had been almost completely overrun, the spread of the T-virus had been slower in the other two continents. Wainwright and the other Eurasian division heads no doubt harbored some illusion that they could beat this back.

Unfortunately, Isaacs was not about to give them the answers they wanted. “We now know conclusively that they have no real need for sustenance. They hunger for flesh but do not require it.”

A rumble of discontent went through the room. The one benefit to the undead so greatly outnumbering the living was the hope that with a shortage of flesh to feed off, the undead would simply die out on their own. Isaacs had said all along that this was unlikely—after all, what use did the dead have for nourishment?—but the Committee had clung to the possibility as if it were a life preserver.

Isaacs went on: “Unless exposed to extremes of temperature or environment”—or, he didn’t bother to add, all shot in the head—“my research indicates that they could remain active for decades.”

Wainwright stood up at that, pounding his fist on the table as