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Isaacs winced at the voice of the White Queen. The artificial intelligence was the next upgrade from the Red Queen, the AI that ran the Hive. That computer had locked the Hive down after the T-virus spread and been a bit overzealous in her enforcement of the quarantine.

The White Queen was supposed to be an improvement, but Isaacs found her voice to be as annoying as the Red Queen’s—who had been modeled after the late Angie Ashford, as a sop to her father.

For his part, Isaacs preferred computers that didn’t have personalities. Not for the first time, he expressed silent gratitude at reading the report that Dr. Simon Barr, who’d developed the AIs that Umbrella used, had been killed by the T-virus a year and a half ago. Isaacs’s only regret was that he hadn’t been able to kill Barr himself for inflicting this lunatic girl on his life.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Another test subject has failed the training floor.”

Isaacs sighed. This grew tiresome. “Where?”

“At the laser grid.”

Turning, Isaacs saw an image on his flat-screen of the re-creation of the security corridor to the Red Queen’s CPU in the Hive. Security Division had been a bit overzealous in its protection of the AI—which was revolutionary, about ten years beyond anything on the open market, and therefore a target, never mind the fact that its placement in the Hive made it sufficiently secure—but it proved to be a fine model for testing the Alice clones.

Or, rather, it would have been if the clones weren’t proving so difficult. “Dammit, they’re getting worse,” he said.

“Shall I ready another?”

“Of course,” Isaacs said. As if she had to ask.

“This will be the eighty-seventh.”

He definitely preferred computers that didn’t have personalities. “Your point?”

“I was merely making an observation.”

Isaacs somehow managed not to snarl at the holographic image. Instead, he just said, “Tell them to take a sample of her blood.” Since there was plenty of it smeared all over the glass walls, that wouldn’t be a hardship. “Then prepare a vaccine from it. We’ll use it on the next subject if this one doesn’t perform.”

Even as he instructed the White Queen, he was walking over to Hockey Jersey and injecting the syringe—which had three needles—into the back of the undead’s neck. Hockey Jersey wasn’t thrilled with this, but DiGennaro had done his job of securing him well, and the bonds held him steady while Isaacs injected him.

Once that took effect, it would be on to the testing stage.

Andy Timson stared at the animated corpse and wondered why he was standing in a room with one.

The corpse that Isaacs had picked out of the crowd outside for the latest experiment was now sitting docilely in a chair. He had been wearing a hockey jersey, causing Paul DiGennaro to nickname him Gretzky, which most of the rest of the staff found amusing. Timson hadn’t gotten the reference, never having followed sports all that closely, but Moody explained that he was a famous hockey player. Moody also had some snide comments to make about Timson’s inability to identify sports figures by name, which he thought was far lamer than Moody’s inability to recognize some dumb old movie quote.

Gretzky’s chair was in front of a table, on which sat a digital camera, a cell phone, and one of those kids’ toys where you fit blocks into appropriately shaped holes.

Amazingly, Gretzky was very docile, just staring at the table through pustule-covered eyes.

Timson hadn’t realized that the serum they’d developed to try to tame the corpses was going to have such hideous side effects. Not that the corpses were beauty-prize winners anyhow, but the boils didn’t make them look any more pleasant.

Still, it seemed to keep him sedate. In a room with three living humans—Timson, Isaacs, and Moody—Gretzky showed no interest in chowing down on their living flesh and turning them into fellow animated corpses. He just sat, staring into space.

Not being stupid, they still chained him to the floor at his wrists.