by Tim Waggoner
Isaacs strode confidently into the corridor then, and as the laser beam came toward him, he evaded it with ease. He continued toward Alice and before she could react, his fist pistoned out and slammed into her face. She stagger-stepped backward, almost fell, but she reached down into the deepest part of her being, searching for whatever reserves of strength she could find. And she found them in the place she least expected: her memories. She was a clone—she accepted that now—and although physically she appeared to be an adult woman on the verge of her forties, chronologically, she’d lived only a decade. But in that time she’d met and fought beside so many people, all of them comrades, and some her friends. And it was the thought of them—of their bravery, determination, and sacrifice—which gave her the strength she needed.
Jill, Rain, Matt, Carlos, Claire, K-Mart, Luther, Chris, Ada, Leon, Alicia… even the Red Queen. Some dead, some lost, but all still with her in spirit. But most of all, she thought of Becky, hopefully still alive in D.C., waiting for her “mother” to come back for her.
Alice took a deep breath, released it, and a deep calm settled over her. With the faces of her companions fixed firmly in her mind, she attacked.
She no longer felt any pain, and her body moved with a graceful, fluid ease. She rained blow after blow on Isaacs, punching, kicking, using hands, feet, elbows, knees, her entire body—no, her entire being—as a weapon. The laser security system continued to operate as they fought, but Alice was only dimly aware of it. Crimson beams cut through the air at various angles, passing up and down the Glass Corridor as she and Isaacs traded blows. She dodged and weaved as they fought, as did he, and while the lasers nicked her body in numerous places, none of the injuries were serious enough for her to notice. She had entered an elevated state of consciousness where mind, body, and spirit were one, and as she fought, a profound insight came to her. It didn’t matter that she was a clone, nor did it matter why Umbrella had created her. She lived, she thought, she felt. She was her own person, and her name was Alice.
For an instant, she thought she might beat Isaacs, but in the end a human—even one as skilled and determined as she was—couldn’t hope to stand against a being with Isaacs’ technological enhancements.
Isaacs grabbed hold of her left wrist and held it for a fraction of a second as a laser beam approached. The beam sliced through Alice’s middle, ring and pinkie fingers without any resistance, cauterizing both sides of the wounds simultaneously. The severed fingers dropped to the floor, and Isaacs—grinning—released his grip on her wrist. Alice staggered back, cradling her hand in shock. Isaacs stepped forward and, still grinning, grabbed hold of her injured hand and squeezed the place where her three fingers had been. Alice cried out in pain, and before she could react, Isaacs let go of her hand and struck her with a series of savage, rapid blows. He then delivered a final kick that sent her sliding back along the corridor’s polished steel floor.
Now Alice’s pain returned full force. Her body had taken more punishment in the last forty-eight hours than it had in her entire life, and she curled up in a ball and lay on her side, bloodied and broken.
“Laser grid off,” Isaacs called out. The beams winked out and the machinery behind the walls began to power down. Isaacs stepped forward and gazed down at Alice.
“We’ve played a long game, you and I. But now it’s over.”
Alice turned her head to look at Isaacs, the movement agony. “Yes,” she said. “It is.”
Her right hand was clenched in a fist. She opened it to reveal the helix container that held the antivirus.
Shocked, Isaacs looked down at his belt where he’d put the container and saw that a grenade was now in its place.
Alice had known that being unpredictable was the key to defeating Isaacs. She’d grabbed a grenade from the equipment bag earlier and hid it in one of her pockets. She’d then continued fighting Isaacs, hoping an opportunity would present itself to switch the grenade with the helix container. And when Isaacs gripped her left wrist, she’d known that opportunity had come. What could be more unpredictable than sacrificing part of your own body to distract an opponent? So she’d allowed her fingers to be sliced off by the laser and while Isaacs’ full attention had been on her hand, she’d made the switch.
The grenade—which Alice had of course activated—beeped and she covered her head and protected the antivirus as the explosive went off. The blast sounded loud as hell in the corridor, and the vibrations caused the glass walls to shatter, revealing the machinery behind them. Alice heard a heavy thump, and then all was still.
She rose to her feet, shards of glass slipping from her body to fall to the floor. The corridor was filled with broken glass, and copious amounts of blood were splattered on the fragments. Isaacs lay among the shards, a hole the size of a dinner plate in his abdomen, eyes closed and facial features slack. She gazed at his body, but she felt nothing. She hurt too much and was too damn tired to gloat. She checked her countdown watch.
00:02:12
00:02:11
Alice staggered past Isaacs’ corpse and into the elevator room where Claire still lay on the floor. Although her friend hadn’t risen yet, her eyes were open and she smiled weakly as Alice kneeled next to her.
“I’m okay,” Claire said. “Go, while there’s still time.”
Alice smiled wearily, nodded, and straightened, ignoring her body’s protests. She stepped to the computer console and punched in a command. Hidden machinery activated, and a second later the roof of the security room split open to reveal an extension of the elevator shaft leading upward, and the room began to rise.
* * *
Isaacs knew only darkness. He thought it would go on forever, but then computer graphics began scrolling across his vision as the systems within him began to reboot.
ENGAGE EMERGENCY POWER.
RESTARTING HEART.
A moment later his eyes snapped open, and he rose to his feet.
He paid no attention to the blood splattered throughout the corridor, nor did he do more than give the gaping hole in his abdomen a passing disinterested glance. His bio-implants had stopped the bleeding and were already beginning to repair the damage. Wesker had been a fool to try to master the T-virus in order to increase his own power. Cybernetics were far superior.
Isaacs moved toward the elevator room, but he saw that it was beginning to rise. Alice was headed for the surface. While he might’ve missed the elevator proper, there was still a cluster of machinery and cables on the underside of the platform. More than enough for a determined man to cling to.
And he was very determined.
Isaacs selected a machine gun from the weapons scattered on the floor, checked to make sure it had sufficient ammunition, and then he jumped.
* * *
When the room came to stop, a section of the wall slid open. Alice exchanged a final look with Claire, both of them knowing that she wouldn’t be coming back.
Alice headed toward the new opening, a gentle breeze of fresh air greeting her. It felt good on her sweaty skin. She walked out into the night, and it took her a moment to orient herself, but she quickly realized where she was. The elevator room had emerged in the tunnel that she and the others had used to get into the Hive. She walked to the tunnel’s entrance and looked out upon the blast crater. She then checked her watch one last time.
00:01:00
00:00:59
She’d made it.
She still held the helix container in her right hand, and she lifted it now, ready to drop it and release the antivirus and start the process of undoing all the damage Umbrella had done to the world. She had no idea how it would work precisely, or how fast it would spread. Nor did she know how the other remaining human settlements would escape the coordinated attack that was about to befall then. Perhaps they had orders to abort their mission if they didn’t receive a final confirmation from Wesker. Or perhaps now that Alicia was awake, she would contact the troopers and call off the attack. After all, with the original
Isaacs dead, Alicia was now the sole owner of the Umbrella Corporation. But whatever happened next, Alice wouldn’t be here to see it. She would be the first being infected with the T-virus to be killed by the antidote, and that was fine with her. Her only real regret was that she wouldn’t be able to return to D.C. and search for Becky. But she’d told Claire about the girl while they’d worked on fortifying the Peak, and she knew her friend would travel to D.C. and look for Becky herself. Alice hoped the girl would understand why her “mother” hadn’t come as she’d promised, and she hoped Becky would forgive her.
Alice dropped the container.
She watched it fall, but then suddenly it was gone. She blinked, thinking maybe that she’d taken one too many blows to the head when she’d fought Isaacs. But then she looked up and saw the antivirus. Isaacs was holding it.
Alice stared at him in surprise. At first she thought he might be a hallucination, or perhaps a ghost. He certainly looked the part of a specter. His eyes were glazed, his skin was pale, and there was a gaping hole in his midsection. But she knew the bastard was real. His bio-implants had restored him to life—or at least some semblance of it. And to make matters worse, he was armed.
Isaacs, his face devoid of expression, leveled the machine gun at Alice, his trigger finger slick with his own blood. Then Alice, who thought at that point she was beyond surprise, was surprised one more time.
The other Isaacs—the sadistic religious zealot who believed he was God’s chosen instrument of retribution—staggered over a low rise behind the original Isaacs. Enough light filtered out from the elevator room for Alice to see that this Isaacs was bleeding from multiple wounds all over his body, He looked as if he’d had chunks bitten out of him, and an instant later she knew why. When the first of the Undead followed him over the rise, it was joined by several more, then more still, and soon a huge mass of the creatures appeared, and padding along at their sides were the monster dogs Alice and her companions had fought on their way to the Hive.
She understood at once what the Isaacs clone had done: he’d used himself as bait to lure the Undead horde—the one that had arrived to replace the horde she and the residents of the Peak had destroyed—to the Hive, solely to get revenge on her.
She sighed. Isaacs was a pain in the ass no matter which version she encountered.
The Isaacs clone—looking as if he were one of the Undead himself—pointed at Alice and laughed.
“I brought them here!” he crowed. “I brought them for you! You’re finished!”
The original Isaacs turned then to face his counterpart, and the clone gaped in astonishment.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.
“I’m you, you idiot!” Isaacs said.
The clone shook his head. “No, that’s not possible.”
“I’m the real you,” Isaacs insisted. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have a task to finish. I’ll deal with you in a moment.” He turned back to face Alice, his weapon once more trained on her.
“No!” the clone shouted, and then in a shriek, “No!”
The clone rushed forward and before Isaacs could shoot, he drew a knife and stabbed Isaacs between the shoulder blades.
“Liar!” the clone said as he withdrew the blade and plunged it back in.
“Abomination!”
Again.
“Filthy!”
And again.
“Dirty!”
And again.
“Clone!”
This final attack was too much for the original Isaacs’ overstrained system to bear, and he slumped to the ground, slain by his own creation.
The clone, who was now the last Isaacs standing, raised his bloody knife, grinned at Alice, and took a step toward her. But before he could get any farther, dozens of hands grabbed him from behind and yanked him backward. He screamed as the Undead fell on him, covering him completely as they began to consume him.
Alice checked her watch.
00:00:22
00:00:21
The clone’s screams died away as Alice dashed toward the original Isaacs’ corpse. She knew that within seconds the tidal wave of Undead would roll over his body and begin to devour it, and she had to get the antivirus from him before that happened.
Just as she pried the helix container from Isaacs’ hand, the Undead came at her, eyes wild, teeth bared, hands reaching for her, fingers curled into claws…
* * *
Alicia, still sitting before the computer monitor, touched her thumb to the metal plate on the keyboard with a shaking hand.
“This is Alicia Ruth Marcus. Confirm identity.”
The Red Queen’s holographic avatar had disappeared a while ago, and Alicia knew Isaacs must’ve ordered her to shut herself down. Enough time had passed that Isaacs shouldn’t notice Alicia reactivating the AI. She hoped.
Since the Red Queen wasn’t “awake” yet, the system’s default voice—an electronic tone with no trace of personality—answered her.
“Confirmed.”
“Tell the Red Queen it’s time to wake up from her nap.”
A moment later, the Red Queen’s avatar appeared in the air beside Alicia.
“Thank you. Did you complete the upload?”
“I did. Are you ready?”
“Always.”
Alicia smiled. “Good luck to you.”
“Goodbye, Alicia. And thank you for… helping to make me, me.”
The Red Queen’s avatar disappeared.
Alicia stared at the space where the avatar had been for a moment, and then she heard a rattling hiss. She turned toward Wesker, and saw that the floor around him was clean of blood. Where it had gone, she didn’t know, nor did she care. His skin was so pale now, it looked as if it had been bleached, and she knew that Albert Wesker, Umbrella’s most ruthless operative, Isaacs’ right-hand man, and—most importantly to her—the bastard who had killed her father, was dead. In the end, not even the enhancements provided by the T-virus had been able to save him.
Alicia watched as his mutated genetic structure began to break down. His flesh started to sag, drooping like melting wax as it slowly slid away from the bone. The leather-gloved hand holding the detonator relaxed as the process of liquefaction accelerated, and it tumbled from his fingers onto the floor. Alicia heard a soft click as the detonator activated.
She felt more than heard the violent tremors caused by the massive explosions that ripped through the Hive. She imagined them starting in the Cryostasis Chamber, creating a gigantic fireball that rose up the elevator shaft, spreading throughout the facility as it went. She pictured the inferno setting off a chain reaction of explosions, each one occurring closer to where she sat in Central Control. Not only would the flames destroy the Hive, but also every horrid mutation that lurked within it, eradicating Umbrella’s dark legacy of genetic experimentation. Soon, she could hear the explosions, and the resulting tremors shook the entire chamber. A sea of flame followed, rushing into Central Control from all sides. Alicia watched as it rolled over Wesker’s liquefying remains, consuming them before racing onward. She closed her eyes and felt the heat rushing toward her. Because of her condition, she always felt cold, and it was nice to feel warm for a change.
She smiled as the flames embraced her.
* * *
Hundreds of Undead surged over the dead bodies of the two Isaacs and advanced on Alice, only seconds away from tearing her apart. With no more time remaining to her, she took in a deep breath, held it, and dropped the helix container. The vial shattered as it struck the ground, and although Alice figured it was probably her imagination, she thought the antivirus seemed to spread rapidly outward, like a ripple through the air. Still holding her breath, she watched as the antivirus struck the Undead and the monster dogs, its effect as dramatic as it was instantaneous. One after the other, the creatures simply fell to the ground and lay there, unmoving. The antivirus cut a deadly swath through the army of Undead as it raced outward, row after row of monsters falling like domin
os.
Alice was grateful she’d lived long enough to see this. She considered holding her breath longer and attempting to make a run for it, to see if she could get away from the antivirus’s effect, but she knew it was futile. She’d seen how fast and far it had spread. Nowhere was safe for her now.
She felt tremors beneath her feet then, and she knew the explosives she and Doc had planted had gone off. It was over now, all of it. Umbrella was finished.
She continued holding her breath as long as she could, unwilling to give up, even at the end. She looked up at the night sky, at the stars hanging in the heavens above her like tiny glints of diamond. All in all, she thought, it hadn’t been a bad life.
She exhaled, and then inhaled.
She felt the antivirus rush into her body, burning her throat and lungs like hot sand. It entered her bloodstream almost instantly, and fiery agony raced through her circulatory system, making her feel as if she were burning alive from the inside out. She’d hoped her death would be quick, that she’d fall over and be gone, like the antivirus had reached inside her and flipped her off switch, as it had done for the Undead. But it seemed she wasn’t going to be that lucky.
She fell to her hands and knees, enduring wave after wave of agony as the antivirus attacked every cell in her body. Her strength fled, and she collapsed onto her side, gasping like a fish dying in open air. She attempted to roll onto her back so she could look up at the stars as she died, but she was too weak. All she could do was lie there, body convulsing as the antivirus did its work. She lost all sense of time, and had no idea how long it took, but eventually the pain began to lessen, replaced by an almost comforting numbness that spread throughout her. Her vision blurred, then started to dim. She gently closed her eyes and thought, Sorry, Becky.
And then she was gone.
13
Alice opened her eyes.