Still, though this entire situation down here was utterly insane, most of it made a certain amount of sense. Her and Spence, the Red Queen going mad, One's team, even the undead employees, given what little she could remember of the types of experiments that went on down here.

But then there was Matt Addison. He'd been an x-factor all along, and it was about time he came clean.

Apparently, Matt himself felt the same way. He set his sister's head down and sat up straight.

"Corporations like Umbrella think they're above the law. They're not. I'm part of an alliance of people who think the same. There are hundreds of us all over the world. Most of us will never meet, but we all share the same goals. Some of us give information, some give support, some take more direct action."

"Like you," she prompted after Matt paused.

He nodded. "If your friends had been a little more thorough, they would have seen straight through that false ID. Then all the red flags would've gone off: Quantico, VICAP, NSA, all the rest. I could never never have infiltrated the Hive." have infiltrated the Hive."

Alice understood the logic-up to a point. "So you sent your sister sister?"

"We needed something concrete. Anything to expose Umbrella to the press. Proof of the research they were doing down here."

"What kind of research?" There were bits and pieces in her head of what went on down here, but none of it would come into focus.

"The illegal kind. Genetic-viral. My sister was going to smuggle out a sample of the virus they were developing. I was meeting her today."

"I can help you get get the virus the virus."

Suddenly things got much much more complicated.

Swallowing, Alice asked, "How was she going to get out of here?"

"She had a contact within the Hive, someone I never met. They had access to security codes, surveillance, everything she'd need."

"I have access to security plans, surveillance codes, the works."

Thinking she needed to be very careful, she slowly asked, "So then why didn't she make it?"

Matt shrugged. "Maybe it was bad luck. Maybe she trusted the wrong person. Maybe they set her up, kept the virus for themselves." He seemed to visibly shudder. "Do you have any idea what something like this T-virus would be worth on the open market?"

Alice was stunned. She looked around at the devastation, thought about the creatures, both human and canine, that were stumbling around down here.

"Worth all this?"

"To someone."

Alice wasn't sure what scared her more: that there was someone out there who believed there was someone like that out there- -or that she herself might be that person.

Twenty-one.

KAPLAN THOUGHT HIS HEART WAS GOING TO stop when the door opened. How the h.e.l.l had the beneath-the-earth road show of Night of the Living Dead Night of the Living Dead managed to enter the right codes? managed to enter the right codes?

Rain whipped out her Colt, but then Kaplan saw that it was Alice and Matt. Kaplan guessed that Alice finally remembered the security code for the door.

"Don't shoot, don't shoot!" she cried as she and Matt entered.

"Close that door!" Spence yelled, running for the door to force it shut again.

"They're right behind us!" Alice added, as if that was some kind of surprise.

No, to Kaplan the surprise was that they made it here alive.

One of the zombies grabbed Spence's arms even as he tried to shut the door. Matt and Alice managed to pry the thing's death-grip off him.

Spence backed off quickly, rubbing the spot the zombie had snagged. "Son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"You okay?" Rain asked Alice.

"They're right behind us," Alice muttered. Then she moved toward the other door. "What about that one?"

Kaplan ran after her. "They're waiting out there, too."

She stopped, turned, and moved toward the gla.s.s-walled corridor where four people had met their grisly deaths thanks to Kaplan's own incompetence.

"That way?"

"It's a dead end." Kaplan winced at his choice of phrasing. "There's no way out of the Queen's chamber."

"So we wait," Spence said. "Someone doesn't hear from you, they'll send backup or something. Right?"

Kaplan and Rain exchanged glances. It looked like they didn't remember Procedure Three.

"What?" Spence asked. "What's wrong?"

"We don't have much time," Kaplan said evasively.

Rain was more direct. "You know those blast doors we pa.s.sed on the way in from the mansion? They seal shut in just under an hour. If we're not out of here by then, we're not getting out."

"What are you talking about?" Spence, who had been Mr. Unflappable up until now, suddenly started sounding as panicky as Kaplan felt. "They can't just bury us alive down here."

Sitting down on the desk, Rain started to ma.s.sage her bandaged hand. "Containing the incident is the only fail-safe plan they had against possible contamination."

Spence looked at her incredulously. "You're only telling us this now now? When we're trapped half a f.u.c.king mile underground?"

"We have to find a way out of this room." Alice spoke with finality. Then she grabbed Kaplan's duffel from the desk.

"What're you doing?" Rain asked as she shouldered the bag and went into the corridor to the Queen's chamber.

"Where are you taking those?" Kaplan asked, though the answer was obvious.

"I'm turning her back on."

Following her down the corridor, Kaplan said, "That's not not a good idea." a good idea."

"She'll know a way out of here."

Alice set down the duffel and pulled out the motherboard.

Rain and Spence had also followed her and Kaplan in. "That homicidal b.i.t.c.h killed my team," Rain said angrily.

As calm as Rain was furious, Alice said, "That homicidal b.i.t.c.h may be our only way out of here."

Spence's voice dripped with sarcasm. "Considering the way she's been treated, I'm sure she's gonna be real real happy to help us out." happy to help us out."

Alice ignored him and slid the motherboard into its slot. Without looking at him, she asked Kaplan, "That circuit breaker you were talking about-can you bypa.s.s it?"

"Yeah," Kaplan said, sounding confused.

"So do it."

As Alice finished off her work, Kaplan went over to one of the other parts of the CPU and entered some codes, then pulled out a remote control.

"All right, circuit breaker's disabled. This time, if I hit the switch, she won't be able to shut down." He looked around at everyone. "She's gonna fry."

Rain actually gave him something resembling a comradely nod at that. Considering Kaplan was half expecting her to put a bullet into his brain for getting One and the rest of them killed, he considered this a good sign.

Maybe she, like Kaplan, was realizing that this whole f.u.c.king situation was way beyond the pale.

As soon as Alice slid the motherboard into place, the computer rebooted, the lights came on, and the red-tinged hologram of a ten-year-old girl appeared.

Then the hologram futzed out.

"Kaplan?" Alice asked, glaring at him.

Blinking twice, Kaplan said, "The initial charge must have damaged her board."

"Good," Spence muttered.

"Ah, there you are."

Kaplan looked around, then noticed the speaker in one corner of the room. The voice was the same as before, but without the visual of the ten-year-old girl.

All things considered, Kaplan was just as happy with that. He'd met Angie Ashford once, and seeing her as the template for the Red Queen's AI had always given him the creeps.

"Things, I gather, have gone out of control."

Rain lunged for Kaplan. "Give me that f.u.c.king switch, I'm gonna fry her a.s.s."

Alice and Matt both grabbed her arms, and pulled her away, for which Kaplan was grateful.

"I did warn you, didn't I?"

"Tell us what the h.e.l.l is going on down here," Rain said, moving away from Alice and Matt, but not menacing Kaplan anymore, either.

"Research and development."

Kaplan almost smiled. It may have sounded like a little girl, it may have been the best AI since HAL 9000, but it was still a literal-minded computer. Garbage in, garbage out. Ask a direct question, get a direct answer.

"What about the T-virus?" Matt asked.

Now Kaplan shot the cop a look. What the h.e.l.l was he talking about?

"The T-virus was a major medical breakthrough, although it clearly possessed highly profitable military applications."

Suddenly, things were starting to make a sick sort of sense. If there was some kind of virus, maybe that was what responsible for the Zombie Jamboree out there. Kaplan wondered what Matt Addison knew about it.

And if he was really a cop.

But that could wait. First, he wanted to know what was happening. So he asked another literal-minded question. "How does it explain those things out there?"

"Even in death, the human body still remains active. Hair and fingernails continue to grow, new cells are produced, and the brain itself holds a small electrical charge that takes months to dissipate. The T-virus provides a ma.s.sive jolt both to cellular growth and to those trace electrical impulses. Put quite simply, it reanimates the body."

Rain frowned. "It brings the dead back to life?"

"Not fully. The subjects have the simplest of motor functions. Perhaps a little memory, virtually no intelligence. They are driven by the basest of impulses, the most basic of needs."

"Which is?" Kaplan asked, even though he suspected what the answer was, and didn't entirely think that he wanted it confirmed.

"The need to feed."

"And this was being developed on purpose?" Alice sounded aghast, which indicated to Kaplan that she hadn't gotten all her memory back. This was pretty much par for Umbrella's course, though even Kaplan had to admit that this was right on the edge of par...

"Originally its function was to combat insufficient cellular growth, as this is what ultimately leads to aging and death."

Rain was still ma.s.saging her wounded hand. "This was all for a f.u.c.king wrinkle cream?"

"One application, perhaps. But a far more ambitious goal would be the eradication of cellular-based wasting diseases. As I said, the T-virus was a major medical breakthrough."

"And also a ma.s.s murderer," Matt said. "Or would that be you?"

"I was trying to keep them isolated, but I'm afraid you've changed all that."

"How do you kill them?" Rain asked.

Kaplan sighed. Rain, as usual, cut to the chase.

"Severing the top of the spinal column or ma.s.sive trauma to the brain are the most effective methods."

Now Rain smiled. It wasn't a particularly pleasant one. "You mean shoot them in the head."