Chapter 14: Now Then. Care to Talk?
Umbrella Corporation. Manhattan Division. Rooftop helipad.
Night. Matthew in black tactical gear, fully equipped, standing in front of Alpha Team. The unit stood a short distance away with hands behind their backs and expressions that said they were ready.
"Your team captain Hunk is currently out of action," Matthew said. "I'll be leading this operation."
"Our objective is straightforward. Covert infiltration of a research facility. Recover classified company materials, deal with elements that pose a threat to the Corporation's interests, and destroy any evidence that could be used against us."
"Clear?"
"Clear, sir!"
"Good. Board up."
"Sir!"
Alpha Team moved to the helicopter immediately. The rotors cut through the night, the sound swallowed quickly by the city around them. No one on the ground below looked up.
They flew for a while. The helicopter set down in an area outside the city, rural enough that the landing drew no attention. The team moved the moment they were on the ground, folding into the darkness and covering ground fast toward the underground research facility on the outskirts of Raccoon City.
Matthew had sent the facility's floor plans to every team member before departure, along with approach assignments. The preparation paid off. They reached the perimeter of the surface installation above the underground lab without complications.
Matthew looked up at the wall. Five meters, topped with high-voltage electrified fencing. Two guards at the gate, both of them looking like they expected nothing to happen tonight.
He looked at the wall again. Then back at the gate.
"Hunter. You and your kit stay topside. Get into their internal network. Once you're in, take all surveillance systems in the facility offline."
"After that, hold position and wait for my orders."
"Everyone else, with me."
"Yes, sir!"
Hunter had the kind of relationship with enemy network architecture that made the rest of it sound straightforward. The response came through the radio in short order.
"Access confirmed. Surveillance is down."
"Move."
Two rounds, two guards. Quiet. No complications. The team pushed through the gate without breaking stride, moving through the dark like they'd been there before.
In the surveillance room, someone's evening had taken a significant turn for the worse.
Every monitor in the room was showing the same image: the surveillance room itself. The feed had been looped and replaced with the room's own cameras, a neat, invisible loop that told the monitoring staff exactly nothing about what was happening anywhere else in the facility.
The supervisor was not taking this well.
"What the hell is wrong with you people?!" He moved between the stations, volume up, patience apparently a finite resource he had already exhausted.
"Why can none of you figure out what's causing this?! Why are every single feed showing this room?! Why, when something actually goes wrong, do you all become completely useless?! What do I even pay you people for?!"
A balding middle-aged technician at one of the terminals tried to offer something constructive. "Sir, please don't—"
"Don't what? Don't be angry? Should I be happy about this?"
"I want this fixed in thirty minutes. Every screen back to normal in thirty minutes or every single one of you is packing their desk tonight!"
The technician, having attempted comfort and received hostility, put his head down and focused on his screen.
The scene did not have time to develop further. The lights flickered twice, then went out entirely.
The supervisor walked out of the surveillance room into a corridor that was fully dark.
The power was gone.
Or rather, someone had cut it.
Power room.
Alpha Team watched as Matthew fired rounds into the fuse box, methodically destroying the breakers one by one.
"Sir," one of the team said carefully, "what exactly are we doing?"
"Shooting out the fuses. Pretty clear."
"I can see that, but—"
"If we destroy the fuses, the people who come after us will have to go around looking for replacement fuses and restoring power as an objective." Matthew put a round through another one. "Side quest."
The team exchanged a look.
Their commander had, apparently, played too many puzzle games.
"That was a joke," Matthew said. "Destroying the fuses activates their emergency protocols. That means their attention is distributed. Their response patterns get split between the power situation and whatever else they think is happening. It makes our job easier."
He finished with the box.
The surface installation above went completely dark. In the corridors, red emergency alarm lights began rotating, throwing everything into a slow, pulsing crimson that made the walls look like something had already gone wrong. The alarm was continuous. The effect on anyone moving through those corridors was predictable.
The effect on the facility's armed security was also predictable: they were already moving toward the team's last known position at a run.
The two groups met in a corridor.
"Drop your weapons! Drop them or we will open fire!"
"Drop your—"
The sentence ended.
Alpha Team stepped over the results and kept moving.
Underground. In his lab, William Birkin stared at the message that had just come through from the surface. His expression had moved past anxious and into something darker.
"Damn it. They're moving faster than I expected."
He turned to Annette, who was beside him at one of the workstations.
"Annette." His voice had dropped. "I have some bad news."
He looked at her steadily. "Spencer's people are already here. My guess is their orders are to take everything we have on the G-Virus. Every sample, every research record. Everything."
"This is our life's work. We can't let them just take it."
"Go to the secondary lab and destroy the data. All of it."
"What about you?"
"I'll take the G-Virus samples and the base compounds myself." He said it without hesitation. "Once you've destroyed the data, take Sherry and get out. This location is compromised."
"But—"
"No. Go. Annette." He held her gaze for a moment. "I love you both."
He turned and ran.
Spencer. You think you can just take what belongs to someone else?
The thought went around in his head with the force of something that had nowhere else to go. The G-Virus was years of his life. It was everything he had built toward. There was no version of this in which he let Spencer walk away with it.
He reached the lab. The G-Virus samples went into the case in quick, practiced movements, he had rehearsed this in some part of his mind without acknowledging it.
He was almost at the door when it unlocked from the outside with a soft electronic tone.
Birkin pulled the pistol from his belt and pointed it at the door.
The corridor outside pulsed red. Against the flashing alarm light, a figure in black tactical gear walked in. Unhurried. Upright. He looked like he had all the time in the world.
"Allow me to introduce myself. Matthew Lawrence, head of Umbrella's security division, and the officer in charge of tonight's operation."
Matthew stopped inside the doorway and looked at Birkin with something that was not quite a threat and not quite an introduction.
"Dr. William Birkin. I've heard a great deal about you. Shame we had to meet like this."
He brought his hands together twice, a quiet, measured clap.
Two figures were pushed through the door behind him. Hands bound behind their backs. Eyes wide.
Annette. And their daughter, Sherry.
In the pale, flickering light of the lab, Matthew looked at William Birkin's face, white as the fluorescent strips above them and asked the question that had already answered itself.
"Now then. Care to talk?"
***
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