Oh, my God, what’s going on—
David stepped toward him, holding his Beretta loosely, confusion and disbelief in his voice. “Steve, what are you doing? What’s happened?”
“Drop your weapons,” Steve said again. His voice had no emotion at all.
“What did you do to him?!”
John screamed, turned and fired at Kinneson, the round punching neatly through his left temple. Kin-neson crumpled, sagging—
Boom!
The second shot came from Steve’s Beretta, hitting John in the lower back. Blood gushed from the hole and as he staggered halfway around, Rebecca saw the dark fluid trickling from his mouth, the dazed disbe-lief in his eyes—
• and John crashed to the cement, spasming once before he lay motionless. It had all happened in the space of a few seconds.
“Drop your weapons,” Steve said calmly. He pointed his semi at Rebecca.
For a moment, Rebecca could do nothing at all. She stared at Steve in horror, felt tears slipping down her frozen cheeks, unable to comprehend what had hap-pened.
“Disarm,” David said quietly, letting his slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor.
Rebecca dropped the Beretta, the heavy weapon falling from her equally heavy fingers. “Back up,”
Steve said, still aiming at her chest. “Do as he says,” David said, his voice trembling just slightly.
They stepped back slowly, Rebecca unable to take her eyes from Steve’s face, the handsome, boyish face she’d grown to care about. Now it was only a mask, worn by a ...
.. . by a zombie.
They backed into a desk and stopped, watching dully as Steve moved to pick up their weapons, Rebecca’s mind whirling with more than just horror and loss. A zombie that could walk and talk like a man. Like Kinneson. Like Steve.
How? When did this happen?
As Steve stepped away, a pleasant male voice came out of the corner of the room, from behind a desk. “All finished, then? My God, what a Greek tragedy. . . ”
The voice was followed by an appearance. A slen-der, gray-haired man stood up and walked around the desk, moving almost casually to stand by Steve. He was in his mid-fifties, his hair long enough to brush at the collar of his lab coat, his lined face sporting a beaming smile.
“I’ll repeat my instructions for the benefit of our guests,” the man said happily. “If either of them makes any sudden moves, shoot them.”
Rebecca knew who he was immediately, knew that she hadn’t been wrong after all.
“Dr. Griffith,” she said quietly.
Griffith arched an eyebrow, seeming amused. “My reputation precedes me! How did you know?” “I’ve heard about you,” she said coldly. “Or Nic-olas Dunne, anyway.”
His smile froze, then widened again. “All in the past,” he said dismissively, waving one hand in the air. “And you’ll never have a chance to tell anyone about the pleasure of our acquaintance, I’m afraid.” Griffith’s smile faded, his dark blue gaze turning icy. “You people have held me up long enough. I’m tired of this game, so I believe that I’m going to have your nice young man kill you. . . ”
He brightened suddenly, and Rebecca saw the mad-ness flashing in those eyes, the complete break from sanity.
“Now that I think of it, why create even more of a mess? Steve, tell our friends to get into the airlock, if you would be so kind.”
Steve kept his weapon trained on her heart.
“Get into the airlock,” he said calmly. Before David could take a step, Rebecca started talking, fast and deadly serious.
“Was it the T-Virus? Did you use that as a platform for whatever this is? I know you were responsible for the increase in amplification time, but this is some-thing new, this is something that Umbrella doesn’t even know about. It’s a mutagen with an instantane-ous membrane fusion, isn’t it?”
Griffith’s eyes widened. “Steve, wait. . . what do you know about membrane fusion, little girl?” “I know that you’ve perfected it. I know that you’ve managed to create a rapid fuse virion that apparently infects the brain tissue in under an hour—“ “In under ten minutes,” Griffith said, his whole demeanor changing from that of a smiling old man to that of a fanatic, his gaze narrowing with a danger-ously brilliant intensity, his lips drawing tight over clenched teeth.
“These stupid, stupid animals with their ridiculous T-Virus! Birkin may have a mind, but the rest of them &K fools, playing with war games while I’ve created a miracle!”
He turned, gesturing at a row of shining oxygen tanks next to the lab’s entrance. “Do you know what that is, do you know what I’ve managed to synthesize? Peace! Peace and the freedom from choice for all of mankind!”
David felt his heart start to pound viciously, his entire body breaking out in a cold sweat. Griffith was pacing in front of them now, his eyes burning with mad genius.
“There’s enough of my strain, of my creation in those tanks to infect a billion people in less than twenty-four hours! I’ve managed to find the answer, the answer to the pitiful, selfish, and self-important breed that the human race has become—when I give my gift to the wind, the world will become free again, it will be reborn, a simple and beautiful place for every creature, great and small, surviving on instinct alone!”
“You’re insane,” David breathed, knowing that Griffith could kill them, was going to kill them, but unable to stop himself from saying it. “You’re out of your bloody mind!”
This is why my team is dead, why all those people are dead. He wants to turn the world into things like Kinneson. Like Steve.
Griffith snarled at him, flecks of spittle flying from his lips. “And you’re dead. You’re not going to be here when my miracle graces this earth, I, I—deprive you of my gift, both of you! When the sun comes up tomorrow, there will be peace, and neither of you will ever know a second of it!”
He whirled around, pointing at Steve. “Put them in the airlock, now!”
Steve raised the Beretta again, motioning toward the opened hatch, where Karen’s lifeless body lay slumped and bloody on the floor.
He’s out of reach, can’t grab the weapon in time—
“Steve, now! Kill them if they won’t go!” David and Rebecca stepped into the lock, David’s body cold, tensed, he had to do something or the world would be infected by this maniac’s psychotic dream—
Steve slammed the lock closed.
They were trapped.
SEVEnfEEn
GRIFFITH WAS FURIOUS, SHAKING WITH ANger as the airlock door slammed closed. Didn’t they see, didn’t they understand anything but their own
petty, stupid lives?
He stared at the young Steve, the rage spilling out, threatening to drive him insane, to make him vomit, to kill—
“Put that gun in your ugly face and pull the trigger, die, die, just die!”
Steve raised the weapon.
Rebecca screamed, beating her fists helplessly against the thick metal door.
No no no no no—
BOOM!
The thunder of the shot cut her screams off. Steve fell against the base of the hatch, mercifully out of sight.
Already dead, he was already dead, it wasn’t Steve anymore—
“Jesus...” David whispered, and Rebecca looked up, looked straight into Griffith’s wildly petulant gaze through the window—
• and Griffith smiled suddenly, a beaming, trium-phant grin of accomplishment and malicious spite. The raging loss and terror she felt were transformed by the sight of that smile. Rebecca stared into those raving blue eyes and realized that she’d never truly felt hate before. Oh you miserable bastard—
He’d told them of his plan, but at that second, the thought was too big for her to fathom, too vast and insane a tragedy for her to fit her mind around. All she could think of was that he’d killed Karen and John, he’d killed Steve—and she wanted nothing more than to destroy him, to see him lose, to see him suffer and feel pain and—