Umbrella’s Raccoon City headquarters was ablaze with light.
Alpha Team could never have breached the underground laboratory so smoothly without support from the local branch.
And because recovery of the G-Virus was considered critical, the people gathered there included not only the facility’s own administrators, but personnel and senior executives from several other Umbrella divisions.
When contact with Alpha Team was lost, everyone in the room realized the situation might already be slipping beyond recovery.
“This is exactly why you deploy more than one team.
You were confident enough to make the call, but did nobody consider that Birkin might fight back?” The man delivering the criticism without the slightest attempt at diplomacy was Morpheus D.
Duvall, current commander of Sheena Island and former director of the Atlantic Research Institute.
Morpheus had never been particularly well liked inside Umbrella, and his personality had made him a convenient scapegoat for the Executive Training School incident.
He still didn’t know who had actually caused that disaster, but Umbrella’s willingness to dump the blame on him had destroyed what little loyalty he had left toward the company.
Frankly, what he’d just said was the polite version, offered only because this was a formal meeting.
If Morpheus had spoken his mind, his response to Alpha Team’s disappearance probably would have been a simple: Good.
Serves them right.
Being reassigned to a position as important as Sheena Island did nothing to fool him.
Umbrella hadn’t suddenly regained its trust in Morpheus; it simply had nobody better available.
So while he dutifully performed his responsibilities as Sheena Island’s commander, he had also continued operating the Atlantic Research Institute, which was supposedly shut down.
If Umbrella decided to turn on him again, Morpheus intended to have a surprise waiting.
He still had enough contacts to make revenge against the company perfectly feasible.
“Morpheus, I understand your resentment, but this obviously isn’t the time for it.
Raccoon City is one of our core territories.
We cannot abandon it lightly.” The speaker was Spencer.
The old man was already confined to a wheelchair and looked as though age might claim him at any moment, but his eyes still had the predatory sharpness of a hawk and a wolf.
Ambition burned behind them.
William Birkin had been a prodigy Spencer personally recruited and cultivated from childhood, effectively one of his own direct subordinates.
In Spencer’s eyes, the G-Virus William created was also an important step on his path toward godhood.
For both corporate and personal reasons, Spencer had insisted on attending this meeting.
If nothing else, it might serve as a final send-off for his once-promising subordinate.
Given the choice, Spencer would not have rushed matters either.
But time was something he no longer possessed.
If he failed to become a god soon, death would reach him first.
His vision of forcing humanity to evolve beneath his leadership would die with him—and that was something he absolutely refused to accept.
The Arklay Laboratory, Umbrella’s most important facility in the Raccoon City region, had been shut down after the Mansion Incident, and the closely associated African research facility had been closed soon afterward.
Even so, Umbrella still maintained two major research sites in Raccoon City itself: the Umbrella R&D Center downtown and William’s underground laboratory.
Just as valuable was the web of political and commercial influence the company had spent years building throughout the city, which made future experimentation extraordinarily convenient.
Unless circumstances left them no alternative, Umbrella had no intention of surrendering Raccoon City.
A vaccine had already been developed, and with enough time it might even be distributed widely.
If so, perhaps the outbreak could still be contained within an acceptable range rather than becoming completely irreversible.
“True.
But you’d better keep a close eye on the U.S.
military…
If this isn’t handled quickly, we’re going to have a much bigger problem.” Before being appointed commander of Sheena Island, Morpheus had already been planning his revenge against Umbrella.
That plan had been shelved rather than abandoned.
At the time, he had used contacts within the U.S.
military in an attempt to acquire a missile casing he could load with a virus.
Instead, he’d stumbled across a far more interesting piece of information: someone on the American side appeared to be considering using the outbreak as justification to take action against Raccoon City.
The logic wasn’t difficult to guess.
If they couldn’t obtain the virus, they could simply wipe Raccoon City off the map and cripple Umbrella in the process.
This wasn’t some desperate contingency invented at the last minute.
Someone had been considering it in advance.
Of course, unless the situation became truly unsalvageable, few people would ever approve something so insane.
Morpheus was still technically an Umbrella executive, so he might as well offer the warning.
Whether the others listened was their problem.
Making their lives more difficult certainly wouldn’t bother him.
“Issue a biohazard warning.
I’ll brief Mayor Warren and Sergei myself.
Hopefully we can bring the situation back under control as quickly as possible.
Sergei will deploy the U.B.C.S.
to rescue civilians, with all compensation paid by the company.
He said that new recruit impressed him, didn’t he?
Then we’ll use this as the man’s entrance examination.
Have him operate alongside the U.B.C.S.
and assist with survivor rescue.” “Once this incident is over, I’ll contact our pharmaceutical division and substantially increase investment there.
Whatever the final outcome in Raccoon City, the outside world is going to demand answers from Umbrella.
We need products that bring them enough benefit for us to weather this storm unscathed.” “Continue attempting to contact Alpha Team over the next several days and determine whether they’ve truly been wiped out.
If they’re still alive, send a second unit to extract them and the G-Virus to Laboratory Six in Paris.
If Alpha Team is confirmed dead, have a replacement team cooperate with Sergei’s U.B.C.S.
forces to recover the G-Virus.” “And if the situation genuinely becomes impossible to control, initiate the final contingency.
Deploy multiple T-103s.
Eliminate every surviving witness and anyone attempting to uncover Umbrella’s secrets, then recover the G-Virus.
Under no circumstances can our classified information or research fall into another company’s hands.
But that is the worst-case scenario.” With that, Spencer made the final decision on Umbrella’s response to the Raccoon City incident.
Nobody appeared inclined to object—except Christine Henry, director of Umbrella’s French branch.
“What about S.T.A.R.S.?
They’ve been investigating company secrets.
Why not eliminate them under cover of the outbreak?
We could also use it as a second field trial for the Nemesis Project—and run a comparative combat test against Sergei’s U.B.C.S.
unit.” Christine naturally had her own agenda.
Information gathered through several channels made Sergei’s intentions easy enough to infer: he wanted Huo Xiu in the U.B.C.S.
During the previous test, Hypnos and the Nemesis-T Type had exchanged only one real move before the fight ended, yet the result had made one fact obvious.
In a confined testing chamber, without environmental interference, ranged equipment, or enough room to maneuver, Nemesis simply could not match the Hypnos Tyrant in close combat.
So this time Christine wanted the battlefield to be Raccoon City itself, with ranged weapons introduced as another variable.
Given an entire city in which to maneuver and exploit their respective strengths, what would happen when the two fought again?
The thought alone rekindled her excitement.
As for the other U.B.C.S.
personnel?
If a few got caught in the crossfire, that was one less salary Umbrella had to pay.
Spencer could see through Christine’s intentions perfectly well.
He simply couldn’t be bothered exposing them.
If she wanted responsibility for the test, she could have it.
S.T.A.R.S.
hardly concerned him.
At the end of the day, they were only a handful of unusually capable police officers.
So what if they had defeated a T-002?
That was an early model.
The T-103 had already rendered it obsolete.
And their investigation?
A few police officers with no powerful organization behind them could discover all the evidence they wanted.
Unless somebody influential was willing to protect them and act on it, what could they possibly do to Umbrella?
At most, they were free live targets for collecting field data on B.O.W.s.
They weren’t worthy of being called Umbrella’s enemy.
Spencer only needed to concern himself with organizations that actually were.
H.C.F., for example.
Little Albert had actually joined them…
Children do rebel.
It seemed the boy had developed ideals of his own.
Perhaps, once Spencer attained godhood, Albert might even prove suitable as his successor.
After all, he was one of the two finest children produced by the Wesker Project.
“Do as you like.
If you want the test, conduct it.
Just don’t let things escalate beyond the point where we can still recover the assets.” Once a B.O.W.
went completely out of control, after all, it stopped being a product and became unrecoverable waste.
“Understood.” One by one, the feeds from Umbrella’s other branches went dark.
Not long afterward, Sergei’s communicator received a direct message from Spencer.
Sergei read it, put the device away, sent Huo Xiu his current coordinates, and followed them with a short message.
“Comrade, your entrance test is about to begin.
Come meet your teammates.”