Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [9]
“Her recovery is remarkable,” Kayanan was saying, “and her powers—both physical and mental, are developing at a geometric rate.”
Isaacs did not acknowledge Kayanan—he’d read her reports, after all—but instead sat next to Alice, brushing wet blond hair out of her face and gently holding her hand. It was cool from the nutrient bath, but he could feel a vibrant warmth beneath. Alice shivered to the point of convulsion and kept looking around. Her mouth kept trying to form a word but couldn’t get past a wh sound.
Assuming it was the beginning of “where,” Isaacs asked on her behalf, “Where are you?” He stood up, trying to guide her to rise as well. “You’re safe. Come on.”
She got up slowly and stumbled once—she hadn’t been on her feet in three weeks, after all, and possibly didn’t remember how to stand. He guided her over against a pillar so she had something to lean on.
“That’s it—there we are.”
Alice’s blue eyes looked lost. Isaacs had only seen so blank an expression on newborns and animals before. It seemed as if she remembered nothing, which worked very much in Isaacs’s favor.
Next to them, Doyle was looking at the readings on the nearby monitor and checking off items on a list on a clipboard. Alice started staring at Doyle’s hands in fascination. Isaacs grabbed the clipboard and the pen and showed them to her.
“Do you know what that is?” He spoke slowly, as if to a child. “It’s a pen.” He started writing on the checklist to demonstrate the instrument’s function. “See? You try.”
He handed her the pen while holding the clipboard up toward her. She gripped the pen as if it were a dagger and started drawing squiggly lines all over the checklist.
“P—” Again, she could handle only the first sound of the word. “P—”
“Pen,” he prompted.
“P—pen.”
Just like a small child. Almost a tabula rasa.
But still, he needed to be sure. More tests had to be run.
First, the basics.
He took the pen away and handed it and the clipboard back to a nonplussed Doyle. Then he grabbed Alice’s wet head and said, “Look at me.”
She stared at him with baffled blue eyes.
“Can you remember anything? Hm? Do you remember your name?”
Blank stare. Glancing around furtively, as if trying to figure out what was wrong.
Sam Isaacs had met Alice Abernathy only a few times before the Hive incident, but while the person in front of him had the same facial features, it wasn’t she. “Ass-Kicking Alice,” as the cruder Security Division personnel had taken to calling her, was always in control of whatever situation she was in. Her sharp eyes missed nothing, and her body was like a coiled spring.
The wet, confused woman standing in front of Isaacs right now was barely in control of her own twitchy movements, her dull eyes weren’t catching anything, and her body was like a wet rag.
“My name…my name…”
She was repeating the words, not entirely sure what they might mean.
Isaacs let go of her and walked toward Kayanan and Cole’s workstations. He almost skipped, he was so giddy. He’d been living a nightmare for months, ever since that jackass Cain had been put in charge of his research. The Nemesis Project had been compromised beyond all recognition, the T-virus had gotten loose first in the Hive and then in Raccoon, the city had been destroyed, and Isaacs’s best hope for Nemesis—not to mention that nascent Tyrant Program—had been impaled by a piece of metal.
“My name…”
But she’d recovered. Finally, he could move forward!
“I want her under twenty-four-hour observation. I want a complete set of blood work and chemical and electrolyte analysis by the end of the day.”
“My name…”
“Sir—” Cole started.
Ignoring him—he couldn’t possibly have anything of interest to say—Isaacs went on: “Advanced reflex testing is also a priority.”
“My name…”
“I want her electrical impulses monito—”
“Sir!” Cole said more forcefully.
Sighing, Isaacs asked, “What is it?”
“My name—”
Isaacs whirled around. The previous times, she’d been muttering those two words almost as if they were a befuddled mantra.
This time, though, she spoke with