As she navigated among the crates, she noticed that they all had two readouts. On top was some kind of pattern that looked like a stereo sound system oscillation. It was steady, but she had no clue what it was actually measuring, since there was no ba.s.s beat to be heard.

On the bottom were one of two words lit up: stable and unstable.

To her relief, stable was the one lit on all the crates she could see.

She approached one of them. Each of the crates had a small window in it.

Peering inside, she saw-something. It was living, that was for sure, though it didn't look like anything she recognized.

But then, would she recognize it, even if it was something commonplace? It was fifteen minutes before she remembered what a bathrobe was, for Christ's sake.

Then again, this thing couldn't have been normal. It didn't have any eyes, for one thing, its skin was all scaly, and it had tubes running all in and out of its body.

Even if it was normal, it was pretty d.a.m.n gross.

Then she remembered something else.

As the new pa.s.sword was entered into her monitor remotely by Lisa Broward, the Licker came onscreen. Alice knew that for a split second, it could be seen on Lisa's monitor, too, before the Red Queen shut her out the new pa.s.sword was entered into her monitor remotely by Lisa Broward, the Licker came onscreen. Alice knew that for a split second, it could be seen on Lisa's monitor, too, before the Red Queen shut her out.

One then scared the s.h.i.t out of her by appearing next to her. She hadn't heard him approach-one moment he was just there there.

He was peering into the window. "I said, keep it tight." He didn't even look at her.

"Sorry. I'm not sure I want to remember what went on down here."

Now he did look at her. In a softer voice than he'd used all day, he said, "I don't blame you."

It was the closest One had come to being human since she met him.

Or, she supposed, re-met him.

Whatever.

As she and One went back to the center of the room, not having found anyone or anything save the crates, Alice overheard J.D. and Rain talking, staring at one of the crates while they guarded Matt.

"What the h.e.l.l do they keep in these things?" J.D. asked.

Rain shot him a look. "How do I know?"

Warner, Kaplan, Drew, Spence, and the medic all rejoined them in the room's center. "Anything?" One asked.

"No, sir," Kaplan said. The others just shook their heads.

"All right, we're proceeding to the Red Queen's chamber. Rain, J.D., stay here with the prisoner. Let's move."

Alice was grateful. Soon they'd be at the computer core, then they could shut her down and get the h.e.l.l out of this madhouse.

Soon, it'd all be over...

Fourteen.

ALICE WAS A LITTLE DISAPPOINTED-THE RED Queen's chamber was just another metal, sterile room. That seemed to be all they had in the Hive-metal, sterile rooms. No decorations, no color variations, just metallic sterility.

The room had one table in the center with three computer workstations, three huge metal doors, and little else.

Everyone seemed focused on the door in front of the workstations. Unlike the other two doors, this one had a window right at Alice's eye level. For lack of anything better to do, she wandered up to the door and stared in.

She saw another sterile corridor, but this one appeared to have gla.s.s walls. It was a narrow s.p.a.ce that led to-surprise!-a big metal door.

Alice woke up in a house that was almost entirely well-polished old wood. Then she took a train that took her to a place that was almost entirely metal, gla.s.s, and plastic. Did Umbrella only work in extremes?

Meanwhile, Kaplan sat at the workstations, jumping back and forth from keyboard to keyboard like some kind of piano virtuoso.

That immediately rang an alarm bell in Alice's head. Piano virtuoso. She knew what that was.

So what the h.e.l.l was a piano?

She stared through the window some more. The corridor was just as boring.

"What's taking so long?"

Alice turned around to see the medic standing over Kaplan, looking impatient.

"Red Queen's defenses are in place. She's making it difficult."

The medic looked cranky. Kaplan ignored her, and kept his virtuoso thing going.

At the sound of cloth rustling, Alice turned again, this time to look at Spence. He had decided to take advantage of this little bit of downtime to rummage through his pockets.

He found a gum wrapper, an ID card with his picture on it, and some loose change.

Everything else went back in his pocket, but he kept out a quarter. Alice was proud of the fact that she not only recognized the kind of coin, but that it was worth twenty-five cents and was one of the new state ones.

Then he started twirling the quarter in his fingers, flipping the coin with one knuckle over the adjacent finger, then repeating it across his hand and back again.

Alice was impressed.

Based on the look on his face, so was Spence.

He smiled. "Didn't know I had it in me."

Then the big door opened up. Alice looked over to see a self-satisfied look on Kaplan's face.

One nodded. "Let's pack it up."

Warner and Drew pulled a huge metal cylinder out of the trunk and put it in a duffel bag.

Alice looked at One, then turned to Kaplan. "He's a cool customer."

"Kept us all alive a long time."

Given their apparent line of work, this was no small thing.

One moved to the door, rifle at the ready.

Alice started to move behind him, which prompted him to stop and stare at her. "You stay here here."

He spoke with finality. A retort of, "No I won't, either," died on her lips. Instead, she nodded and backed off, going to stand next to Kaplan at the computers.

One continued into the gla.s.s-lined corridor slowly. His rifle was out, he was bent over slightly, and looked ready to take on anything.

Halfway down, a series of lights behind the gla.s.s walls came on. Alice had to avert her eyes from the sudden brightness, which reflected off the ceiling and the other parts of the gla.s.s.

One shot Kaplan an irritated look, and the latter checked his monitors.

Then Kaplan spoke into the walkie-talkie on his left shoulder. "The lights are automated-nothing to worry about."

One nodded, and continued down the corridor.

As Alice watched, One made his way to a door that looked like-something.

A bank vault. That was it. It was certainly thick enough.

Reaching into one of the dozens of pouches on his all-black outfit, One pulled out some kind of transmitter. At least Alice a.s.sumed that was what it was, based in part on the small plastic antenna that he pulled out before affixing it to the big vault door.

Then he spoke into his own walkie-talkie-the abbreviation PRC popped into her head all of a sudden-and she heard his words over the like devices on everyone else's shoulder: "Transmitter in position."

"Roger. Running the bypa.s.s." Kaplan's fingers started flying across three keyboards. The left-most workstation had a stream of code flying by. The monitor in the middle blinked with the words locking system override, and the one on the right was running a pa.s.scode search, running all the mathematical possibilities for the five-digit code that would allow them to gain ingress.

Alice found herself engrossed by the right-most screen, watching the numbers change rapidly until set-ding on one each: XX1XX.

XX1X7.

X2 1X7.

1 2 1X7.

12 17 7.

"Checkmate." Kaplan smiled.

As he spoke, the vault door opened. One looked inside, rifle pointing right inside, but there didn't appear to be anything there.

"Move up," he said with a come-here gesture.

From this distance, Alice couldn't make anything out, but she doubted that One would call up the rest of the team if there was any serious problem.

Warner and Drew picked up the duffel, and headed in, the medic right behind them.

Alice indicated the bag with her head and asked Kaplan, "What is that?"

"That's what's going to shut the Queen down. It delivers a ma.s.sive electrical charge, scrambles the mainframe, and forces it to reboot."

Alice nodded. Simple, straightforward, yet productive. She admired the simplicity.

Then the vault door closed...

Fifteen.

SO FAR SO GOOD.

Days like this, One felt proud of the work he'd done here. Most of the time, providing security for Umbrella felt like a waste of his considerable talents. He'd survived the jungles of South America, the killing fields of Eastern Europe, and the deserts of the Middle East. He'd done and seen things that would make most people either suicidal or homicidal-or both. Or, at the very least, sick to their stomachs.

The fact that he did all of these things in the service of his country was one of the reasons why he took Major Cain up on his offer to join the private sector. Not so much that he didn't like the work, but he needed a change. He'd done the work for half a dozen different presidential administrations, all with theoretically different ideologies, but all in need of people like One who could get things done without anybody knowing about it. It wasn't a boast for One to say that he'd kept the world safe for democracy-h.e.l.l, safe for humanity humanity-on more than one occasion, but he also knew that the very people he'd saved would never know what he did.

That got tiresome.

Besides, Umbrella paid better than the government. Not that money was of great concern-he did the work because he was good at it, and really only took the money because that was how the world worked. He had no real use for the money. Still, better to have it than not, he supposed.

Now, he and his team were in precisely the kind of situation he reveled in: unpredictable, unknown parameters, x-factors like Parks's and Abernathy's amnesia and that cop, and curve b.a.l.l.s like the dining hall that wasn't a dining hall.

Throughout, his team remained calm, cool, professional, competent.

He expected no less, but that didn't mean he wasn't glad when it happened. The situation had been anything but textbook, but his team's response had been perfectly by the book.

That was the only way to accomplish anything.

Warner, Drew, and Danilova came in, the former two carrying the duffel with the EMP. They'd shut the Queen down, pull out the motherboard, and then they could go home.

Then the vault door closed.

One turned around to see that the outer door had also closed and locked.

The four of them were locked in the corridor.

Warner and Drew dropped the duffel and pulled out their rifles even as One called into his PRC, "Kaplan!"