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Chapter 120 – ResidentsAlex kept an eye out for anything else nasty. The female officer ran along at a pretty good speed and still managed to say, “I’m Chambers. This is Redfield. We’re part of Team Alpha of S.T.A.R.S. We came in to investigate what happened to Team Bravo.”
“I saw what was left of some of them in the chopper,” Alex told her.
Redfield chipped in, “One of the bodies got dragged a good distance from the chopper, and we lost one of our people when he checked it out with no backup.”
They got within sight of the mansion just as some other people slammed the front doors shut on about four more of the muto-dogs. Alex zoomed forward and blasted the dogs with bolts of lightning, dropping all of them.
Redfield caught up with her, with Chambers right behind him. He muttered, “Crap, I wouldn’t want to have to fight my way through these things to get inside.” He grabbed the door handle and tried to open the door. “Damn it, they locked it.”
Chambers asked, “Can you blame ’em?”
He grumbled, “These things are just ugly dogs, not armed criminals.”
Alex grabbed the inside doorknob with her TK and pretended to turn the knob really hard. As soon as she turned the inside knob, the door unlocked. She ushered them in.
Chambers muttered, “Christ, you’re strong.”
Redfield complained, “I hope you didn’t wreck the latch, because we probably need to keep more of those things out.”
They stepped into a large, two-story entry hall big enough to host a party. It had a big staircase opposite the entry doors, with balcony areas going off to either side. And there were doors on either side of the hall on both floors.
This place was going to be a huge pain if anyone got separated.
And there were three other S.T.A.R.S. officers standing there in the hall. A big guy with a beard and mustache, a really pretty brunette wearing a foofy beret, and a too-handsome blond guy who acted like he knew he was really handsome.
She knew who the last one had to be. Albert Wesker. He had his hair expensively cut and styled, and he smoothed it up on the sides as he smiled her way. He had gleaming white teeth, and his uniform was tailored to show off his muscular form. He was even wearing a pair of dark glasses! At night! On an op! What a jerk.
She disliked him already, even without knowing about the probably-Orphan thing. Wesker was like the biochemically super version of every guy she’d ever liked because he was so handsome and dynamic, and who had then treated little Alex like garbage. Okay, that was really only two guys total including Jerkhead Scott, although Annie had gotten the ‘take advantage of and then ditch’ treatment from a couple of handsome guys who wanted to have Annie’s gigantic brain working for them without treating Annie right.
He smiled. “I’m Albert Wesker, the leader of Team Alpha. I never expected we’d get the famous Terawatt dropping in to help us.”
Foofy Beret Lady said, “Well, I’m glad of it. Those dogs were … not normal.”
If Foofy Beret Lady hadn’t been abnormally attractive, Alex would have explained about what she’d seen of the ‘dogs’. But Alex had to assume that Foofy could be another Orphan, even if Willow hadn’t had her name on their ‘potential Orphan’ list. After all, the SRI still didn’t have a handle on any overseas Orphans who might have been adopted by Americans and brought into the country. And Foofy could easily be half-Asian just from her looks.
Wesker pointed at Foofy Beret Lady and said, “Jill Valentine.” He pointed at the big guy with the beard and mustache. “Barry Burton.” He looked at Alex and added, “And you already met Chris Redfield and Rebecca Chambers.”
Alex gave it her best Terawatt voice. “We have several problems we need to address immediately. We’re not just facing a family of hillbillies with some attack dogs, but something a lot more dangerous. There may be more of those ‘dogs’ around, and some of their handlers may even be inside this place. We have no comms. And whatever took down your other team’s helicopter was definitely not a dog.”
Wesker smiled smugly. “Well, Terawatt, about the only thing that could’ve knocked that chopper out of the air would be a surface-to-air missile … or someone with superpowers.”
Jerkhead. Half the team was looking suspiciously at her now. She retorted, “Or sabotage. Didn’t anyone notice the helicopter crashed on its side instead of upright? How’s that going to happen unless the engine cuts out and the rotors freeze, so it can’t windmill down and maintain orientation and some lift? The side that was facing up had a hole blown in it. From the inside.”
Wesker asked, “Jill, what do you think?” He turned back to Alex and explained, “Valentine’s our demolitions expert.”
Way to insinuate and throw the blame around, jerkhead. Alex didn’t say it out loud, though. But she sure thought it, and …
Oh, crud. Jill could be an Orphan, too. So … What if Jill was really the badguy instead of Wesker? There was no evidence that Wesker was one of the badguys, just because he was on the ‘potential Orphan’ list. And just because she didn’t like him.
Or what if it was both of them? This could be so totally bad. She really needed Jack. He’d know what to do, and he’d be able to read Wesker and Valentine better than she could, and he’d have lots of backup.
Jill asked, “What did the damage look like? We couldn’t see the side of the copter from the ground.”
Alex carefully described where the hole was, and what it looked like.
Jill thought it over. “Could have been a small demolition charge right against the engine block. Someone who knows choppers and demolitions could easily plant a small charge that would kill the engine so the rotors would lock up instead of spin freely. But they ought to be able to do that so it doesn’t blow an obvious hole in the side, too.”
Wesker pointed out, “But the only way to drop the copter right here would be to have someone waiting here with the trigger.”
Alex disagreed. “Or broadcast something that would set it off as soon as it got close. There’s a huge signal jammer somewhere around here, and that could be the trigger. Or it could contain the trigger as a tiny part of the overall signal.”
Wesker thought for a second. “Good idea. I didn’t think of that.”
Did he really not think of it and he was giving her fair credit, or was he being a lying weasel? She couldn’t tell.
Redfield asked, “Then why didn’t they take out our chopper the same way?”
Wesker frowned. “No idea. Maybe they tried. Maybe they didn’t know we’d send in a reaction force right away, and they dropped the ball.”
Alex wondered if maybe the badguys had accomplished exactly what they wanted. If Alex hadn’t swooped in just when she did, Chambers and Redfield would be dead, and Wesker would be ordering Burton and Valentine around right this second. Maybe, if she hadn’t seen insane stuff — like the blob or the silicates or Gojira — which happened to be exactly what someone in The Collective wanted to achieve, she wouldn’t be thinking like this. But she was really wondering if this was supposed to happen, minus her sticking her nose in.
Wesker said, “Let’s take a look around. We’ll split up to cover more ground, and we’ll meet back here in thirty minutes.”
Alex insisted, “No way. We need to work in teams. If there’s something like those dogs loose in some part of this place, we’ll need teamwork, because there won’t be any calling for help. And I don’t know any of you, and some of you obviously don’t trust me, so we should have two teams of three.”
Wesker shrugged. “Fine. Jill, how about you and I take Terawatt. Barry, you take Chris and Rebecca, and … Where the hell is Chambers?”
Crud! While Alex had been busy worrying about Wesker and Valentine, Rebecca had wandered off! Were these S.T.A.R.S. people just stupid or something? They were supposed to be highly trained, and they looked like they had all the teamwork of five-year-olds playing soccer, which Alex had thought was a ton of fun when she was five, but was definitely not teamwork in any way. Five-year-old soccer had been more like two swarms of bees chasing a ball.
Maybe Wesker was deliberately trying to screw up the teamwork. Maybe this was part of the plan.
Or maybe not.
But Wesker was supposed to be the team leader with all the experience, so he had to know how to do team stuff! But she didn’t like him, so she wanted him to be the badguy. But on the other hand …
The door on the left flew open and Rebecca came running in looking freaked. “I … I found one of our perps. I think.”
“You think?” Wesker asked in a snotty tone.
“He … had just killed Kenneth. By ripping his throat out. With his teeth. And he was eating him! And …”
Alex said in her very best Jack O’Neill I-know-what-I’m-doing tones, “Valentine. Wesker. You’re with me. Chambers, you stay here with the other two and don’t leave the hall until I say so.” She floated over to the door.
Wesker ordered, “Jill, you’re on point. I’ll take our six.”
Alex didn’t like that. She didn’t want to have Wesker with all his guns standing behind her and Valentine, and she didn’t like that he was putting the person who was easiest to hurt up front. She went silvery.
Jill stared at Alex. “Wow, that’s weird. I mean, I heard about it, but seeing it in person …”
Alex just said, “Let’s investigate while there’s still a chance we can find our perp.”
Jill looked shocked that Alex could still talk while she was silvery. “Right,” Jill finally nodded. She moved through the door and down the hall.
“Uhhrrrrr.”
Alex heard the low, creepy moan. Even though she was silvery, it still felt like the hair stood up on the back of her neck.
And still crouched over the dead body was …
Was that even a person? It looked even less like a person than those dogs looked like dogs.
It was dressed in what had once been clothes, but now were nothing but tatters. Its skin was gray and mottled and veiny, with almost no hair left on its head. Its eyes were dead, and were just wrong, and Alex couldn’t imagine how it could still see.
It turned its head to face them, and Alex heard Jill let out a freaked-out squeak.
Alex was silvery, so she could see behind her, and Wesker just did not look freaked. Maybe it was the dark glasses hiding his eyes. Maybe it was something else, like maybe he knew what to expect.
But Alex was plenty grossed out, and she’d seen some horrible things over the past year. It looked like, on top of everything else, it had chewed its own lips off. Or something else had chewed its lips off and it just didn’t care.
If this was a biochemical that turned people — and dogs — into zombie-like things, then this op was going to get totally icky.
No, this was already way ickier than she wanted, but she was pretty sure it was going to get even ickier.
She had no idea how people could think being a superheroine was a glamorous job.
The thing stood up and came at Jill. Alex was figuring Jill would be too freaked to do anything, but Jill stepped back and put two expert shots right in its center of mass. And Alex could see the bullet holes, because the tattered clothes weren’t really covering much of its chest.
It staggered a little, but kept coming.
Uh-oh. If a bullet to the chest wasn’t going to stop it, this would be mega-icky. Alex hastily put a careful lighting bolt into it. It jerked and fell backward onto the carpet.
“What the hell is that?” Yeah, Jill was plenty freaked.
Alex asked, “Is it still human? And is it still alive?” She stayed in her silvery morph so she could look both ways down the hall. “And how many more of these things are there?”
“Uhhrrrrr.”
It started to get back up. After two bullets to the chest and a lightning bolt. Oh, crud. She needed to use bigger charges on these things. Or else. She didn’t want to think about what she was going to do if even her big lightning blasts didn’t keep these things down.
Alex was about to put another bolt into it, when from behind she saw Wesker pull out a really big automatic and line up his shot. She scooted a little to the side and used the rest of her TK to push Jill to the right, just in case Wesker decided to take care of a problem other than the zombie-guy.
Wesker’s shot went right through where Alex’s middle would have been, and blew the top of the zombie-guy’s head off. The guy dropped and didn’t get back up.
Alex turned around, even though she was in her silvery morph. “Was that necessary?”
He glared at her from behind those shades. “Hell, yeah, lady. You saw it shake off two rounds to the center of mass and a freaking lightning bolt.”
She was worried that he was right. This used to be a person, but now it was something inhuman. And it ate that S.T.A.R.S. officer’s throat out. These officers were trained to take down threats using lethal force, and this might be the worst threat they were ever going to see.
She stared at the finally-dead zombie-guy. She had to ask herself if that guy could have been saved. Unless someone like her dad could come up with a way of turning the guy back to normal, the guy had no chance. He would just be a creepy, mindless carnivore until he died. He would probably rather be dead than like this.
But what if there was an antidote? She had to wonder if Wesker had some, or had already taken some. If Wesker was part of The Collective and he was doing whatever he was supposed to do — or maybe whatever Jill Valentine was supposed to do, for all Alex knew — then he would want to have plenty of antidote, either in a pocket or in his veins already, just in case he got exposed to whatever this mutagen was.
Alex stared at the two bodies and made up her mind. She had to find out who was the badguy, and she had to find out about the mutagen, and she had to find some antidote in case some of these … people … could be saved. And the dogs, too, even if dobies weren’t her favorite breed of dog.
Oh, yeah, she needed to use bigger lightning charges and work her way up until she had some stopping power … or she ran out of lightning.
This was even more sick and wrong and evil than those silicates, or the spiders. She said, “We need to rejoin the other group and give them an FYI on this.”
Jill asked, “And where are the people who are supposed to be here? Our intelligence said there was supposed to be a couple of caretakers, a couple of gardeners, a cleaning crew, and a two-man security team. And some of them aren’t supposed to be up here during the winter season, like the gardeners.”
Alex asked, “What about the buildings and the heliport out back?”
Wesker replied, “No idea.”
Jill frowned. “A heliport? And buildings? There’s not supposed to be anything else here besides the mansion and the gardens and a gatehouse.”
Oh, great. Even the S.T.A.R.S. people had bad intel. Probably on purpose.
Alex turned and flew back to the entry hall, making sure that Wesker and Valentine were right behind her.
And there was no one in the entry hall. Burton, Chambers, and Redfield were gone. Crud!
Jill said, “We can’t warn them. My comm system is still jammed.”
Wesker nodded. “Yeah, we need to track them down.” He pointed at an open door on the right that had been closed before. “There aren’t any other doors open, so they must have gone that way.” He headed for the door.
Jill went right after him, so Alex followed. They went through some kind of art room, past another dead zombie guy with a bullet hole in his chest and one between his eyes, and into a long L-shaped hallway.
Oh, crud. There were three more dead dogs that looked like they had jumped in right through the windows. The bullet hits made it pretty obvious that the other group had needed a few seconds to figure out how to take these things down, because the first one had half a dozen bullet holes all over, and the other two had only head hits. Which were still totally gross.
Wesker muttered, “This doesn’t look good.” He snapped, “Let’s move it. Jill, take point.”
They followed the hall, which turned and turned again. Wesker pointed at a door. “I’ve got your six.”
Jill swung open the door and stepped into the room ready to shoot something. Alex followed. The room was totally empty.
The door slammed shut behind them, and Alex heard the sound of something locking. The sound of a heavy motor started up over their heads, and the ceiling began sliding down toward them.
Alex suddenly realized the room was designed for the ceiling to crush anyone and anything. There was no furniture to get in its way. The ‘paintings’ were posters flush with the walls. The ceiling light was flush with the ceiling. The door had a ‘frame’ that was flush with the wall. There was no door handle on this side, just a flat metal plate. And the hinges were special hinges that were flush with the wall, too. There was another door into the room that was exactly the same. There wasn’t anything that stuck out even a fraction of an inch, not even a baseboard.
“Wesker! Albert! We’re trapped!” Jill yelled as she pounded on the door. There wasn’t any sound from the other side.
Alex floated down to the hardwood floor so she could use all her TK. Then she used it to push up on the ceiling. Whatever was pushing down wasn’t slowed a bit by her measly two hundred or so pounds of push.
Jill said, “Step back.” She changed magazines on her automatic and fired at where the latch went into the frame. The bullets ricocheted off. Alex used some TK for a shield so the bullets wouldn’t bounce back off the walls at them.
Jill scowled. “This nine millimeter isn’t going to cut it.” She glanced up at the ceiling, which was now only a foot above the top of the door. “Got any handy superpowers?”
Alex grabbed the latch with her TK and pulled it back. Then she used her TK to turn the deadbolt where Wesker had locked them in, and she pulled the door open.
Jill stepped into the hallway, her gun swinging back and forth as she checked for threats. Alex floated out of the room after her. Wesker was gone. What a huge surprise! Not.
Alex pointed out, “Wesker locked us in to get rid of us, and then he took off. He’s a threat to the rest of your team.”
“No, he wouldn’t! He’s been team leader for a couple of years. We trust him!”
Alex decided she was going to trust Jill. After all, it sure looked like Wesker had tried to kill Jill, too. Alex asked, “Are you adopted?”
“What? What does that have to do with anything?” Wow, Jill looked really uncomfortable about that question. Alex figured that meant she was on the right track.
Alex kept pushing. “Were you adopted from one of the overseas Children’s Home orphanages as a newborn? Maybe 25 to 31 years ago? And maybe you got an email in the last few months from them?”
Jill went white and pointed the gun at Alex’s chest. “Look, you may be part of this thing, too, but I’m not. I’m not joining up, and I’m not even admitting I ever got an email. I like being on the force here. I like being part of this team. I … like Chris. I’m not giving all that up to become some sort of crazed cultist trying to take over the world.”
Alex believed her. She had seen people act before, but she’d never seen anyone who could fake going ashen like that. She smiled. “Good. I can protect you from these guys. But our best guess is that Albert Wesker is part of their group, too, and may have been for some time. He’s probably part of this whole mess.”
Jill thought it over. “I … Maybe. He’s not as good at demolitions as I am, but he knows our equipment inside and out. He could’ve planted a small C-4 charge in Team Bravo’s chopper. But he wouldn’t want to blow himself up.”
Alex said, “The shot he took at the zombie guy would have gone through me and maybe through your neck, too. He might have been trying to solve three of his problems simultaneously.”
Jill thought for a second. “So that was you pushing me out of the way with … what? Telekinesis?”
“Yeah, telekinesis,” Alex admitted. “And since Wesker divided up the team, he may have someone working for him in group two.”
Jill shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. Chris wouldn’t. And I trust Barry and Rebecca.”
Alex grimaced. “Then Wesker might have set up something to lead them into a trap, because I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who took down those mutated dogs in the hall.”
Jill looked horrified. “So what do we do? It could take hours to search this whole place, and before you got here, I checked the other door on the right side of the entry hall. It was locked, and I don’t know if I can pick it.”
Alex just told her, “Not a problem for me.”
They headed back toward the entry hall. The now-shattered windows were letting in cold air. And two really huge spiders.
Okay, ‘really huge’ was relative for Alex, given the tarantulas she had run into. These things were the size of a sheepdog. So they were icky, but not scary.
Well, not scary for Alex. Jill gasped and yanked out her gun.
Alex tried to sound reassuring. “Take it easy.” She fried both spiders with lightning. “Save that ammo, unless you’ve got a spare case hidden in your pack.”
Okay, those spiders were still mega-eww and she didn’t want to get anywhere near even the remains. She floated a few feet off the floor and they headed back to the entry hall.
“Okay, they wouldn’t be going through locked doors,” Alex thought out loud. “And I can open pretty much any door we find.”
Jill said, “I’ve got a small lockpick set. I’m the team lock specialist.”
“So if you can’t pick the locks you blow them up?”
Jill smiled slightly at that. She explained, “Well, we do have a shotgun with lock-buster rounds, and a small demolitions kit, but I’m guessing they both got left on the chopper or they’re lost out in the woods.”
Alex added, “Or Wesker made sure no one had them.”
“You’re really down on Albert for some reason,” Jill complained.
Alex explained, “I’m down on the whole Team Evil deal. I’ve been fighting them for months now.” Come to think of it, so far she was batting almost a thousand in fights against them. That would be great, except she knew the first time she failed, she’d probably get killed and The Collective might take over the planet.
Jill asked uncomfortably, “And they’re all … like me?”
Alex nodded. “Yeah. And they’ve got Maggie Walsh working for them, creating biological nightmares.”
Jill shivered. “We got briefed on Margaret K. Walsh and that blob. The FBI’s now calling these cases Code Walshes. I was hoping S.T.A.R.S. wouldn’t have to deal with anything like that.”
Alex flatly said, “I get to deal with just about all of them.” Jill winced.
As they moved back through the ‘art’ room, Alex was still several feet off the floor, so she spotted something in the vase held up by the statue. She yanked it out with her TK and unrolled it. “Wow, this is convenient. Someone’s giving us a map of the first floor, and they’re putting it where no one would see it. This totally makes sense.”
Jill pointed out, “You’re the only one who could possibly see that thing up there.”
Oh, crud. Jill was right. Unless you were dopey enough to search every square inch of a huge mansion full of monsters, you were never going to find that thing. Was this something Wesker just set up as some kind of trap for Terawatt?
She thought out loud. “If Wesker put this here … for me … then he wants me to go through the whole mansion … or fall into some kind of trap … So … It’s a test. He’s gonna throw everything he’s got at me, and see what’s Terawatt-proof.”
Jill worried, “What are we going to do? We have to help the others. They could be in all kinds of trouble! I mean, did you see those spiders?”
Alex flatly said, “I’ve seen worse.”
“Oh! Right,” Jill backpedaled.
They walked into the big entry hall. Alex looked around. There could be hidden cameras all over this place, or at least hidden mikes. She said, “Let’s step outside and we’ll talk.”
She opened the front door, and three more of the zombie-dogs lunged at her.
She hit all three with a massive burst of electricity, and they dropped. Two landed in the doorway, so she used her TK to haul all of them fifty feet to one side of the door.
She led Jill fifty feet in the other direction. “Okay, I don’t know if there are hidden cameras or bugs in there, and I don’t want to take the chance. I’m going to go straight up until I’m out of jamming range so I can contact my people and give them a heads-up. I want you near the front doors. If something you can’t stop comes at you from outside, duck inside and slam the doors. If it comes from the inside, duck outside and slam the doors. If you get both, retreat to the art room and wait for me there.”
Jill asked, “You think there are going to be even worse things?”
Alex just gave Jill a look. She took a quick treetop-level flight around the immediate area to make sure Jill was reasonably safe, and then she went straight up. She had to go maybe half a mile up before she got a signal through her sat phone.
“Tera to base. Tera to base. Can anyone read me?”
“Tera! You’ve gotta stop doing this to me! I already have gray hair!” Jack fussed.
She tried not to smile, but it didn’t work. “Jack, we’ve got big problems. It’s not a couple of hicks and some attack dogs. It’s mutated Dobermans and mutated people and mutated other-stuff. So far, the people and dogs look like zombies, and they’re hard to kill, and they act like they’ve lost all conscious thought, and I saw a zombie person-thing that ripped a guy’s throat out and then was eating him!”
Jack couldn’t resist asking, “Do they stagger around and say ‘braaaaaaaains’? Just asking …”
She frowned. “The guy just kind of went ‘uhhrr’ but the dogs were like regular attack dogs. Fast, deadly, barking and growling, the whole deal.”
“Okay, it’s definitely an SRI op. Do you know how widespread this is?”
She admitted, “No idea, but those dogs are fast. They could be moving all over the area. If they can spread this stuff by contact, or biting, or whatever, this could be really bad. And Wesker is definitely in this up to his eyeballs, and he’s already tried to kill me at least twice, and officer Valentine, too, and it turns out she’s an Orphan too but she was adopted overseas and she’s not on Acid Burn’s list. She says she doesn’t want to be part of The Collective, and since Wesker’s trying to kill her, I believe her. But someone else in the team — either Barry Burton, Chris Redfield, or Rebecca Chambers — is probably working for Wesker, so the others may be dead now. Oh! And I’ve found spiders the size of a sheepdog, so Maggie may be contributing evilness to this project, too, so there’s no telling what else may be in there. And I think Wesker’s going to unleash everything they’ve got so they can see what’s me-resistant. And please don’t say ‘Tera-proof’, okay?”
Jack said, “As soon as we hit the signal jammer, we pulled back and called Hammond for more support. We’ve got National Guard troops moving in on this area from all directions.”
“Well, warn ’em that they need to take headshots, because I saw one of these guys take two bullets right in the chest, no armor either, and nada. And those dogs are fast. You do not want to give them time to get to you.”
Jack said, “First, don’t assume Officer Valentine is on the up-and-up just because Wesker might have tried to kill her. It might be a con, or they might be in opposing Collective cells, or something else. And also be on the lookout for a guy named Birkin. William Birkin. Age 31, really handsome, adopted from an Asian orphanage as a newborn —”
“Oh, crud.”
“— and he’s a top-notch virologist.”
Alex gasped. “Oh, holy crud, you mean this might be a virus instead of a biochemical? So this stuff might spread just by people getting bitten or scratched, or just getting some of the zombie blood on a cut? Or maybe even with mosquitoes? This is mega-bad!”
Jack agreed, “Yeah, although there aren’t going to be mosquitoes out at this time of year, it’s too damn cold. You can thank Acid Burn and Manny’s team for coming up with this name. They went through the on-line Quad Cities phone books and backhacked everyone they could through the local HMOs to get age and health status and birth date. Birkin is a top employee of something called Umbrella Corporation, which — surprise — doesn’t make umbrellas.”
Alex complained, “No, they just want to cover the whole planet, I bet.”
Jack said, “Yep. ‘We cover the world’ or something like that. I guess ‘Engulf and Devour’ was already taken. Burn also confirmed that when Oracle was chewing her up and spitting her out, one of the big companies that offered her a cushy IT job was Umbrella, so that might have been the Collective’s fishing expedition for Willow Rosenberg that we missed. Umbrella Corp also has some very big names on its board, including one Alfred Ashford who’s English. And 29.”
Alex groaned. “Oh, no, don’t tell me he’s drop-dead gorgeous and adopted as a newborn in England!”
“Yep, along with his sister. Your BFF Hermione just dug that one up for us,” Jack said in his smirky tone. “And Burn found out that two major Midwestern political families and two rich Midwest business families have people on Umbrella’s board and major money invested … and each family also has a 25-to-31-year-old family member who’s adopted and good-looking and charismatic and really successful. One U.S. Representative, one rich businessman, one filthy rich venture capitalist, and one state senator who’s talking about running for governor of Iowa at the next election. And all four are on our ‘potential Orphan’ list.”
Oh, crud, that sounded totally bad. “Are they gonna sweep this under the rug?”
Jack said, “You know they’ll try, especially given the kind of power their families wield. So I’ve already called Team Two in to hit the Umbrella Corporation HQ in downtown Davenport. You’ll be utterly surprised that they got a special deal on state and municipal taxes, too, and they have their own super-expensive skyscraper that had its construction subsidized by the city. Manny and Moe say there’s something hinky with the official plans for the basement levels, so they probably have the whole cliché secret underground lair deal going on.”
She muttered, “Great. This place is huge, and it has a big building out back that’s too big to be some dinky gatehouse, and there’s a heliport, too, and who knows what else, and there’s probably secret underground lair stuff here, too. And Albert Wesker and his pals want to play Whack-a-Mole with me, so he left me a map of the first floor of the mansion.”
Jack thought for a moment and then told her, “Watch out. The map may be faked to hide a secret room, or it may be laid out to lead you into traps, or it may just set you up for something in the underground lairs or whatever.”
“Okay.”
He said, “Check your tPhone. We’ll rendezvous with you in the mansion’s entry hall in … thirty minutes from … now.”
“Roger that. Let’s try and surprise the tar out of Mr. Wesker.”
“We aim to please,” Jack smirked.
It was probably a bad sign that Alex knew Jack so well she could tell over a sat phone when he was being smirky.