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Pinto nodded and typed more commands in.

Then the image on the plasma-screen jumped and faded away, replaced with the words SATELLITE OFF-LINE. The other monitors went to static.

“What is it?” Isaacs asked angrily.

Shaking her head, Pinto entered some commands, then pounded the keyboard in frustration. She shifted her chair over to another control station. “It’s the satellite—some kind of malfunction.” Turning around, she said, “It’s not like we’ve been able to do maintenance on the things.”

“Can you move another satellite into place?”

Nodding, Pinto said, “Already on it. Satellite 5 will be in place in six minutes.”

Tensely, Isaacs watched the technician work. The seconds ticked by agonizingly. Luckily, he’d already gotten “authorization” from Wesker for this operation, so Pinto’s commands would be automatically authorized without the need for oversight. Moving a satellite would have taken far longer otherwise.

After Isaacs was certain six minutes had passed, he testily asked, “How long?”

“New feed coming online in fifteen seconds.”

Perhaps it was only five minutes and forty-five seconds. Isaacs sighed. He didn’t mind waiting, but he hated not knowing…

Alice felt control come back to her limbs. She’d done it. It had taken all her focus, but she’d concentrated on the Umbrella satellite that was monitoring them and managed to burn out just one microchip. Such a small chip, yet destroying it had such catastrophic consequences.

At least, they were catastrophic if your name was Sam Isaacs. For Alice, it was liberation. She raised her Kukris and looked at the undead that remained.

She smiled. “I think you boys are looking for me.”

If you had told Chase MacAvoy ten years ago that he’d be hanging off the Eiffel Tower in Vegas shooting at horror-movie rejects that had murdered several of his closest friends, he’d have sent you to the rubber room.

Or at least put you under arrest. He’d been able to do that during his all-too-brief tenure as a county sheriff in Texas.

That reign had been brief, ended by a scandal that had been caused by an error in judgment on Chase’s part. That error was in thinking that the quarterback on the high school football team wasn’t above the law. The state religion in Texas was football, and nobody messed with that. If the quarterback raped and killed one of the cheerleaders, well, that was a tragedy, true, but the state championships were coming up. Chase hadn’t seen it that way, and he’d put the quarterback under arrest.

Suddenly, there were pictures. They’d been Photo-shopped, but try explaining that to an angry populace who wanted their star quarterback on the field, and besides, that little slut was asking for it, wearing that short skirt and tight sweater…

After the special election kicked him out of office, Chase got in his truck and drove north. When he crossed the border into Oklahoma, he swore he’d never set foot in the great state of Texas again.

Thus far, he’d kept that vow. Though at this point, he had a certain interest in heading back there to see if any of his fellow townsfolk were still alive.

Chase hoped they weren’t, and he hoped they died in considerable pain.

But he could be a vindictive sumbitch when he put his mind to it.

Now, though, Texas and quarterbacks and sheriff’s duties were the last thing on his mind. Dorian and Erica had been chased all over the Strip. They caught Erica, but Dorian was now climbing up the tower. Seven of the big, scary monsters were climbing up after her, and Chase could not get a good shot. He winged the tower a bunch of times, hit shoulders and chests, but couldn’t get himself a head shot. And nothing short of a head shot’d kill these bastards.

That Alice dame came outta nowhere, then, and threw something at four of the monsters, hitting them right in the back. Whatever they were, they worked, as the four of them fell to the ground. Alice then leapt way faster and farther than people were supposed to and landed on the tower. She started to climb.

Just as Dorian