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Another month, maybe two, and we would have given it to them. We would have turned it over without a fight, and William would have made the executive board and we would have been happy. Everyone would have been happy…
There was a faint squealing from one of the muted security screens. A
… and Umbrella won't have it. I'll die before I let them have it, so help me God.
Her only consolation in all of this mad, horrible affair was that Umbrella hadn't managed to get their greedy hands on William's synthesis. They hadn't and they never would. Everything that had gone into the creation of the G-Virus would be buried under a thousand burning tons of stone and wood, along with William and all of the monsters they had created for the company. She would go into hiding for a while, take some time to heal, to consider her options and then she would sell the G-Virus to the competition. Umbrella was the biggest, but they weren't the only conglomerate working on bioweapons research and when she was through with them, they wouldn't be the biggest anymore. It wasn't much of a revenge, but it was all she had left. "Except for Sherry," A
And now it's too late. We'll never be a family, we'll never be parents together. All that time wasted, slaving for a company that sold us out in the end…
It was too late; there was no point in mourning what could have been. All she could do now was make sure that Umbrella wouldn't get anything else from the Birkin family. William was gone, but there was still Sherry; that part of him would go on, and A
… unless Irons is still alive. That fat, greedy bas-tard could find a way to screw even that up if given half a chance.
She hoped he was dead; even if he wasn't directly responsible for Umbrella's awareness of the G-Virus, Brian Irons was a disgusting, arrogant man with the morals of a sea slug. After years of loyalty to the company, he'd been bought out for a measly hundred thousand dollars. Even William had been surprised, and he'd had an even lower opinion of the police chief than she had… On the screen, the Re3 had finished its meal. All that was left of the dead man was an empty shell, arched, bloody ribs, and a faceless cup of skull, the surely vibrant colors lost to the video's flat shades of gray. The licker scrabbled out of view, trailing sticky fluids in its wake. Thanks to the T-Virus, all of the reptile series were efficient killers, although the 3s had design flaws – the protruding cerebrum was the most obvious, but they also had a ridiculously high meta– bolic rate; keeping them fed had been a constant hassle.
Not a problem anymore. Plenty of canton to go around – and lucky them, they'II get a chance for a hot di
A
… and William may have found a way out. I can't keep denying it, no matter how much I want to. There was an abandoned factory west of the lab, a shipping company that had been bought up by Um-brella to ensure that the underground levels would stay secret; it was how Umbrella had managed to build the complex in the first place without arousing suspicion, hiding equipment and materials in the factory's warehouses and using the heavy machinery lift to transport them. Although the entrances from the factory had still been sealed off the last time she'd checked, there was a slim chance that William had gotten through – and if he could get to the factory, he could get into the sewers.
A
… after they came for the G-Virus, the men in the gas masks, shooting and ru
She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to push that terrible memory aside, trying to forget about the incident that had taken William from her and turned Raccoon into a city of the dead. It didn't matter anymore. The journey ahead wouldn't be a pleasant one, and she had to concentrate. Escaped Re3s, first-and second-stage infected humans, the botany experi– ments, the arachnid series – she could run into any of the T-Virus carriers, not to mention whomever Um– brella had managed to send.
And William. My husband, my beloved – the first human G-Virus carrier, who isn't really human any-more.
She'd been wrong to think that she had no more tears inside. A