by Tim Waggoner
You were my friend. We were going to do such good for the world…
Isaacs held Marcus’s gaze for several seconds before turning abruptly and walking out of the study. He told himself he did this because he had arrangements to make. After all, he would have to oversee Umbrella’s operations by himself after Marcus’s “accidental” death, and there was a lot to do. He wasn’t walking away because he felt a twinge of guilt over what he’d ordered Wesker to do to his one-time friend.
He wasn’t.
As he departed the house and headed to his obscenely expensive car parked in the drive, Isaacs’ mind turned toward the biggest obstacle now standing in the way of his seizing complete control of Umbrella: Marcus’s one and only heir. His daughter.
It would’ve been simpler if the Werner syndrome had killed her. For an instant, Isaacs toyed with the idea of taking his phone from his pocket, calling Wesker, and asking him to arrange for the girl to have an “accident” of her own. But he quickly discarded the notion. Her death on top of her father’s would raise too many suspicions. Besides, as the poster child for the health benefits of the Progenitor Cell, she could still be useful.
As he climbed into his car and turned on the engine—smiling with satisfaction as the high-performance machine purred like a beloved pet welcoming its master—he supposed he’d have to take the girl under his wing, act as her guardian and mentor, and help shepherd her through the difficult days ahead. She would come to rely on him, be grateful for his counsel and support. In time, she might even come to love him. And then she’d have no choice but to support his plans for Umbrella. How could she say no to the man who’d become a second father to her? The more he considered it, the more he thought that having a daughter might be amusing.
As he put the car in gear and started driving away from Marcus’s home, he was too lost in his scheming to think of looking in the rearview mirror. If he had, he might’ve seen his old friend’s daughter standing at an upstairs window, watching him leave, brow furrowed in deep thought.
* * *
Dr. Isaacs became the guardian of his dead partner’s child and her half of the company. Under Isaacs’ guidance Umbrella was quick to weaponize their new discovery.
Working with another scientist, Dr. Charles Ashford, Isaacs used the Progenitor Cell to create the T-virus. A virus that would mutate human flesh in new and terrifying ways, or could create an army of Undead overnight. Profits quadrupled thanks to a new era of viral and bacterial weaponry. Umbrella even created genetic mutations with battlefield applications—bio weapons.
Within just a few short years, Umbrella had become the most powerful financial entity in the world. The corporation that had begun with such lofty ideals had been seduced completely by greed and power.
To help him control the now vast interests of the Umbrella Corporation, Dr. Isaacs created a powerful Artificial Intelligence computer. As a “tribute” to his dead partner, Isaacs used the likeness and brain patterns of Marcus’s daughter for the computer’s interface. Isaacs called the computer the Red Queen.
Then ten years ago, in a Midwest American town named Raccoon City, there was an outbreak…
The T-virus escaped from an underground laboratory named the Hive.
The American government attempted to contain the outbreak by detonating a bomb. It devastated Raccoon City, but it couldn’t stop the airborne infection. The viral outbreak spread across the world within days. Humankind was brought to its knees. And what survivors there were soon became the targets of the Red Queen.
The Artificial Intelligence seemed determined to wipe out all remaining human life on Earth. But her plan ran into a small problem… me. Once an operative for the corporation, I turned against Umbrella. I fought them every step of the way. I even confronted and killed Dr. Isaacs.
Finally, after years of running and fighting, the last and best hope of humanity gathered and took a last stand in Washington, D.C. But what we didn’t realize was that we had been lured there. And what we had walked into… was a trap.
My name is Alice, and this is my story. The end of my story…
1
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Darkness surrounded Alice—in more ways than one.
She held tight to the rungs of a metal ladder attached to the wall of an underground shaft. There were no lights, and the stiflingly hot air reeked from a combination of gasoline, scorched earth, and burnt flesh. Above her was a metal plate: a hatch that would open onto the surface. She’d already unlocked it, but the hatch didn’t want to budge. Maybe it had been damaged in the battle, the metal fused shut by an explosion or raging fire. Or maybe there was something weighing it down. Rubble, an overturned tank or jeep…
Or the door could just be stubborn. She shoved again.
This time the metal plate gave way and the hatch flew open. The light that flooded in was dim, but she’d been in the dark long enough that it hurt, so she squinted her eyes. More welcome was the rush of cool air on her skin, and although it stank of fire and death, it was far better than breathing the stifling air in the shaft. She made certain to breathe through her mouth, though.
She pulled herself out of the shaft and managed to crawl several feet before the last of her strength gave out and she collapsed to the ground. She lay there, exhausted, face and body smeared with blood. Some of it hers, most of it not. As she looked up at the smoke-streaked sky, she listened for sounds of combat, spread her hands out on the ground and felt for any vibrations from military vehicles or combatants on the move, human or otherwise. Aside from the crackling of small fires and an ironically gentle breeze, she heard and felt nothing. She wasn’t surprised. It was the silence that had convinced her it was safe to leave the underground chamber in which she’d sought shelter.
As safe as it ever gets in this world, she thought.
Sights, sounds, and sensations flashed through her mind as she waited for some of her strength to return: memories of the terrible battle that had taken place on the White House grounds and how she’d come to be part of it.
* * *
She’d been captured by Umbrella and taken to a facility beneath the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Russia. Umbrella Prime served as a combination clone-manufacturing plant and bio-weapon testing environment and “showroom” for potential customers. The facility contained huge sectors that simulated parts of various cities—New York, Tokyo, Moscow… even the suburbs of Raccoon City, the closest thing Alice had to a hometown. These sectors could be populated by uninfected clones with enough basic memories implanted so they would believe they were ordinary citizens going about their lives. Then infected clones would be introduced into the environments and maximum carnage would ensue, duly horrifying and impressing representatives of those world governments with enough money to afford Umbrella’s prices.
Alice had been imprisoned in Umbrella Prime and interrogated by an old friend, Jill Valentine, who’d fallen under Umbrella’s control. But Alice had been freed by a pair of unlikely allies: former Umbrella agent Ada Wong, and that cold-blooded bastard Albert Wesker. The Umbrella chairman claimed the Red Queen planned to destroy what remained of the human race, and he proposed an alliance with Alice for the sake of their species’ survival. Alice didn’t trust Wesker, of course—after all, the son of a bitch had actually tried to eat her once—but she’d wanted out of Umbrella Prime, so she’d allowed Ada Wong to help her escape. Wesker had hedged his bets, though, and sent in an extraction team to assist the two women if necessary. They were forced to make their way through several of the simulated cities where they’d been attacked by both Undead and mutated monsters. Along the way, Alice saved the life of a young girl named Becky who believed Alice was her mother. Alice understood that Becky’s mother—or at least the woman Becky believed to be her mother—had been a clone of Alice. Alice couldn’t leave the girl to die, though, so she’d brought her along. Eventually they hooked up with the extraction team and, after suffering several casualties, they managed to escape to the su
rface, destroying Umbrella Prime in the process. They found themselves on an ice shelf in the bitter cold, only to be attacked by Jill Valentine and the clone of another old friend, Rain Ocampo. But this Rain was an Umbrella loyalist, and she injected herself with the Las Plagas virus, enhancing her strength, speed, and durability tenfold.
Alice and her remaining companions fought Jill and Rain, and in the end Rain was killed when Alice caused her to fall through the ice into the frigid ocean, where a horde of Undead released when Umbrella Prime was destroyed set upon her like a pack of rotting-fleshed sharks. Jill fared much better. Alice managed to dislodge the spider-like cybernetic implant attached to the woman’s chest that controlled her mind, restoring Jill to her former self. Wesker sent a military chopper to pick them up after that, and Alice—somewhat the worse for wear after fighting both Jill and Rain—was tended to by medics as the chopper flew toward what had once been the United States. Becky had survived, as had Ada and Leon Kennedy from the extraction team. After several refueling stops, they reached Washington, D.C., and eventually the White House. Or rather, what was left of it. Becky was taken by a female staff member who promised to look after her. By this time, Alice had accepted the role of Becky’s guardian, and the girl’s safety was of the utmost importance to her. No way did she want Wesker near Becky, so she allowed the woman to take the girl away.
Alice was ushered into the Oval Office alone, where she found Wesker sitting behind the President’s desk as if he owned it. Before she could do anything, Wesker—moving with inhuman speed—rushed toward her. He was little more than a blur, and Alice barely had time to register that the bastard was attacking her before he jammed a high-tech hypo-injector against her neck, sending liquid fire surging into her veins. The chemical spread rapidly through her body, bringing with it a pain so intense that it felt as if she were being electrocuted. She cried out, as much in fury as agony, and fell to the floor, her body spasming uncontrollably. Forcing the words through gritted teeth, she demanded to know what Wesker had done to her, but as quickly as it had come, the pain began to ebb, and she felt a familiar strength growing within her. The injuries she’d sustained while fighting Jill and Rain healed with unbelievable speed, and her senses became sharper.
Wesker had restored her powers.
Alice responded far differently to the T-virus than anyone else, including Wesker. Where it had turned him into a half-insane monster who could barely control his abilities, it had once transformed her into what might well have been the next stage of human evolution. She’d become far stronger and faster than ordinary humans, and she’d started developing psychokinetic abilities as well. She’d used her newfound gifts in the fight against Umbrella and the monsters they’d unleashed on the world, but as time went by, she felt her humanity slipping away more and more, until she feared she was in danger of becoming a monster herself. So when Wesker eventually nullified her powers, she hadn’t been altogether sorry. But now Wesker had given back what he’d taken from her. The question was: why?
The instant that Alice regained control of her body, she leaped to her feet, prepared to make Wesker regret that he’d transformed her into a living weapon once again. But Wesker reminded her that he’d been the one to engineer her escape from Umbrella Prime because he needed her to help him stop the Red Queen from destroying the last remnants of the human race. He’d then led her to the roof of the White House, along with Jill, Ada, and Leon, and showed them what they were up against. Quite simply, it looked like hell on earth. The White House grounds were enclosed within a barricade formed from fifty-foot high ferrocrete walls. Inside the walls, soldiers ran back and forth, some working feverishly to reinforce the barricade, others taking up defensive positions between the walls and the White House, while still others manned weapons installations that contained large flame-throwers. Beyond the walls, thousands of Undead and mutated monstrosities pressed against the barricade, climbing atop one another so they could get over the walls and begin slaughtering the fragile humans on the other side.
The sight of so many ravening creatures howling for their destruction took Alice’s breath away, and she felt a spark of panic flare up inside her. But she fought it down, took a deep breath, and said, “All right. Let’s get to work.”
* * *
An Undead woman rushed toward Alice across the White House grounds, hands outstretched, eyes feral yellow. Her mouth yawned wide and tentacular mandibles emerged with nauseating sticky-wet sounds that Alice could hear even over the din of the battle raging all around. The woman managed to get within five feet before Alice raised one of her two TDI Vector submachine guns and blew her head apart with a short burst. The woman dropped to the ground in a spray of blood and lay still, truly dead at last. A long time ago, Alice had wondered what, if anything, went on in the mind of an Undead. Was there some part of them that was still human, trapped within an ambulatory corpse whose only desire was to kill and feed? Was its human part aware of what its mutated body did, unable to stop it? And if so, did they die afraid and in pain, silently screaming, I’m in here! Please don’t hurt me!
But she’d stopped wondering such things long ago. In the years since the Outbreak, she’d destroyed thousands of Undead—it was impossible to know precisely how many—and it all came down to a very simple equation: you killed them or they killed you.
Another Undead came at her, this one a middle-aged man, and she dispatched it as easily as she had the woman, and with as little regret. Living in a post-apocalyptic world had turned Alice into a deadly efficient survival machine, and she had no time for doubts and recriminations. They made you hesitate, and hesitation got you killed and eaten.
It was dawn, and Alice stood in a circle with her companions, all of them facing outward, their backs to each other. Ada was on her right, Jill on her left. Leon was next to Ada, and Wesker stood on the opposite side of the circle from Alice, which suited her fine. She might be forced to make common cause with the bastard, but that hardly made them friends. They were all armed to the teeth: submachine guns, handguns, grenades, knives… In addition, Alice carried a katana strapped to her back.
Your clones wielded the blade so effectively, I thought you might like one, Wesker had said.
One thing she could say about him: he wasn’t stingy when it came to handing out weapons, and there were plenty more in the makeshift armory within the White House if and when they needed to rearm. A part of Alice felt like a kid in a candy store. But another part of her, a part she kept deeply buried, longed for a day when she no longer relied on weapons, when all the blood and death would finally be over.
Steady streams of Undead, giant Lickers, zombie dogs, those damn flying things, and creatures Alice had never seen before flowed over the barricade walls, but so far, the walls themselves were holding. Alice didn’t know how much longer they could withstand the massed weight of the Undead pushing against them, though. Sooner or later, the walls would be breached and when that happened… Alice didn’t want to think about that, so she kept firing at the monsters racing toward them, bringing them down one after the other with deadly accurate shots. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to possess the heightened awareness the T-virus granted her. It was as if her attackers moved in slow motion, giving her more than enough time to aim carefully before she fired. It was almost too easy.
Not so for her companions, though—with the exception of Wesker, who possessed the same lightning-fast reflexes as Alice. Jill was now free from the scarab device that Umbrella had used to control her, and while that meant her mind was her own again, it also meant that her body was no longer enhanced by technology. With the scarab, Jill had been stronger and faster than an ordinary human. Without it, she was still a highly trained ass-kicker with attitude to spare, but she was no stronger or faster than an ordinary person. Ada and Leon were top-level Umbrella operatives, although they no longer served their corporate masters. But despite all their skills, like Jill, they were only human. So far, Jill, Ada, and Leon were mow
ing down Undead with ease, but eventually they would tire and begin to slow down. It was inevitable. And once that happened…
She would just have to do everything she could to keep them alive then, wouldn’t she?
Alice, Wesker, and the others weren’t the only ones battling monsters. Soldiers armed with assault rifles, submachine guns, and flamethrowers fired at anything that wasn’t human, whether it was on the ground or in the air. Helicopters flew over the battlefield, strafing the mass of Undead, and tanks fired on them, the artillery explosions sending dozens of them flying in all directions. But the efforts of the White House defenders weren’t enough. There were simply too many of the enemy to even make a dent in their numbers, and more were coming over the walls every second.
Alice wasn’t certain why the soldiers were helping Wesker—or maybe she had it backward. Maybe Wesker was helping them. Then again, he had been sitting behind the President’s desk. Had whatever remained of the US government struck some sort of deal with Umbrella? Or had the Red Queen declared war on all surviving humans, Umbrella personnel included? Once this battle was over—assuming any of them survived—she was going to have a long talk with Wesker. Something more was going on here than what he’d told her. But that wasn’t a surprise. Wesker specialized in lying and manipulation. It’s what made him so good at his job.
A giant Licker came thundering toward Alice then, the massive creature moving swiftly on all four of its legs, sharp talons raking large divots out of the ground as it came. The fifty-foot-long monster collided with Undead, knocking them aside or trampling them. It was completely skinless, leaving its raw muscles exposed to the open air. It had a fang-filled mouth and an elongated tongue that lashed the air like a whip as it ran. But its most revolting feature was the swollen exposed brain tissue that covered the majority of its head, including where its eyes should’ve been.