Resident Evil_ Extinction - Keith R. A. DeCandido [94]
Alice took Carlos’s bloody hand in hers. “I can’t believe L.J. didn’t make it.”
“Yeah.” Carlos shook his head. “God, when I think of everything the two of us went through, all the people who died all around us, and he was still right there with that goofy smile and talking about busting a cap in the zombie-ass motherfuckers’ asses…”
Unable to help it, Alice chuckled. She almost felt guilty about it but then decided that it was the best way to remember L.J. From what Carlos had told her, he had taken on the role of morale officer in their convoy, always making sure everyone was distracted from the nightmare they’d come to live in. Perhaps because L.J. had seen the worst of it back in Raccoon City and was one of the few to make it out alive, it gave him a perspective the others needed.
Or maybe he was just the kind of asshole who thrived in lousy conditions.
At least for a while.
Alexander Slater had just about hit the end of his rope.
It had been bad enough being assigned to work with Sam Isaacs. Slater had never been overly impressed with the doctor’s work, thinking him to be a hack with delusions of grandeur, but that didn’t prepare him for the megalomania.
Now, though, he’d finally taken that step over the line that Slater knew had just been a matter of time. Isaacs had thought himself so clever, smuggling a digital recorder into the meetings with Wesker, but Slater knew he’d been doing it. He could have reported it. In fact, according to regulations, he should have reported it. But regulations were guidelines more than anything, and especially now, Slater felt a more Darwinian approach was called for. Let Isaacs dig his own grave.
Sure enough, he’d done it. Using the recordings he’d made, he put together “orders” to allow him to leave the facility and pursue Project Alice—this after Wesker expressly forbade him to do so.
Naturally, Slater wasn’t going to let that stand. He let Isaacs do what he wished on the surface; leaving aside any other considerations, he might come back with Project Alice, which would change things. However, he returned empty-handed—and without four of the people he’d taken with him. Slater assumed that Margolin, Pinto, DiGennaro, and Lobachevski were as dead as Timson and Moody. The security guards were less of a concern, but Margolin, Pinto, Timson, and Moody were people they could ill afford to lose. Indeed, they couldn’t afford to lose anybody right now, and Isaacs’s callous disregard for Umbrella’s needs—not to mention for human life—was something that could no longer be tolerated.
Upon his return, Slater ordered Perroneau to confine Isaacs to his lab and showed him the written orders from Chairman Wesker that ceded authority over this facility to him and removed Isaacs from his position as head of Umbrella’s Science Division.
After spending some time with Rosenbaum in the IT Department to make sure that all the computer protocols had been changed so that Isaacs no longer had access, Slater went to Isaacs’s lab, where Humberg was waiting for him.
“How is he?” Slater asked the guard.
Shrugging, Humberg said, “Under house arrest, as you instructed. He’s been quiet. He was infected by one of those enhanced biohazards, though, so he’s had to have the anti-virus.”
“I thought he got a shot in the plane.”
Humberg hesitated. “He’s had several shots, sir. I thought you knew.”
Sighing, Slater entered the lab. Perroneau and Finnerty were standing guard over Isaacs, who sat at his desk, injecting himself with the anti-virus. Several empty vials lay on the table next to him. He looked pale and unwell. A bloody bandage was on his shoulder where one of the enhanced biohazards had attacked him.
His eyes widening, Slater asked, “How much of