Rebecca and Ivan had no objection.
With the decision made, the three of them headed back to the earlier room.
The animal statue puzzle had long since been solved by Bravo Team, and the door now stood open before them.
They stepped inside — but after searching both of the rooms beyond it thoroughly, Ivan’s squad found no passage out.
If anything, the place was a pair of sealed chambers.
The only things inside worth anything at all were a single red herb and a notebook belonging to an executive trainee.
Billy read as he went, relaying the contents to the other two.
“It’s a trainee’s diary.
He writes that James Marcus had an unusual obsession with leeches.” “It baffled him.
He had no idea what James Marcus was actually researching.” “All he’d heard was that the leeches were extremely dangerous.” “His friend Dennis came into contact with one and fell ill with a fever.” The further Billy read, the worse the look on his face became.
“In the days that followed, this trainee kept hearing screams coming from behind a door.” “He developed a deep terror of James Marcus.
He wrote that even if he were ordered to assist with the experiments the way Dennis had, he would never obey.” “He says that ever since Dennis was infected, the man wouldn’t stop clawing at his own skin.
Even when he was drenched in blood, he never stopped…” Billy couldn’t bring himself to read the rest word for word.
He forced his eyes over it in a rough skim, nothing more.
When he finished he drew a long breath, then pressed the notebook into Ivan’s hands, telling him to keep this latest piece of evidence against Umbrella safe.
Once Ivan had taken it, Billy folded his arms across his chest and let out a heavy sigh.
“Poor bastard.
He ended up as one of James Marcus’s specimens anyway.
Right at the end, with his mind coming apart, he was crying out for his mother…” Silence settled over the three of them.
Human experimentation at James Marcus’s hands was nothing new to any of them.
But an account from someone who had lived it drove home the madness behind those experiments far more sharply than any of the figures in James Marcus’s own journals.
It was Ivan who finally broke the quiet.
“Which tells us that as time went on, the infighting between Spencer and James Marcus kept escalating.” Ivan’s words pulled Billy back to himself.
He pushed down the enormous anger he felt toward Umbrella and tried to look at the deeper causes of what the Arklay Mountains had become with a cooler head.
“Ivan, do you think Spencer knew James Marcus was running human experiments?” “These were supposed to be Umbrella’s future executives.
And they were just used up as test material?” It made no sense to Billy.
If experiments were what they wanted, then as James Marcus or Spencer, sitting on a commercial empire that size, there were a hundred ways to source test subjects.
Why take such an enormous risk turning on their own future leadership?
Rebecca was thinking too, though along a different line.
What struck her was that not even Umbrella’s own future executives had been allowed to know what James Marcus was actually working on.
And from there her thoughts drifted to the man who had actually pushed for the formation of the S.T.A.R.S.
unit under Umbrella’s funding — Chief Irons.
It wasn’t that Rebecca suspected her own superior.
She was thinking of the transfer orders on the train earlier, and of Wesker and William, both named in James Marcus’s journal.
What if Umbrella and Wesker had worked together to set Chief Irons up?
As far as Rebecca was concerned, the suspicion hanging over Wesker was heavy indeed.
She didn’t want to believe it.
But what had happened to that trainee had opened a new door in the way she thought.
That was when Ivan spoke.
“The way I see it, he knew and he didn’t know.
He didn’t know and he knew.” “It was a kind of unspoken understanding between Spencer and James Marcus.” “Both of them needed the t-Virus experiments finished.” Billy’s and Rebecca’s eyes were on him now.
Ivan went on laying out his reasoning.
“The first man needed the t-Virus completed to serve some larger purpose of his own.” “The second was in love with the work itself, and he also needed results from the t-Virus to break the deadlock he was stuck in.” “But whatever their goals were, in James Marcus’s eyes the speed of t-Virus research came down to one thing: whether or not he ran human experiments.” Ivan paused, gathering his words, then continued.
“From James Marcus’s position, he needed human experiments to finish his research.
But all the power in the company was in Spencer’s hands alone.” “He couldn’t requisition the resources, so the only people he could reach for were the ones right next to him.” “Because whatever else happened, he couldn’t let outsiders find out he was experimenting on people.” “Judging by where things stand, Spencer definitely knew.
Which means he tacitly allowed it.” “That got him two things.
More leverage over James Marcus, and a faster track on t-Virus development.” Ivan stopped there and gave Billy and Rebecca time to digest it.
After a moment, Billy, leaning back against the wall, ground his teeth and drove his fist hard through the empty air.
“Filthy.
Did they dredge their hearts out of a sewer?
There’s not a shred of humanity in them!” Rebecca’s delicate brows drew tight, and worry weighed down every word she said.
“Ivan, Billy — how many more people do you think there are like that trainee, like Dennis?
People Umbrella has written a script for…” Ivan and Billy looked at each other, and both their faces darkened.
They understood what she meant.
If even the executives Umbrella raised in-house could be spent as experimental material that easily — Then in Raccoon City, a city built on Umbrella’s back, how many people were being used without ever knowing it?
And if you widened the frame a little more…
What about the whole world?
An invisible hand, vast and unseen, closed over all three of them in that moment.
Ivan shrugged.
He pulled off his night-vision goggles, and his handsome face — unseen for a long while now — appeared before the other two.
He let the goggles dangle from his left hand and gave them a bright, sunlit grin.
“Hey!
Rebecca, Billy, take a look at where we are.” “We started out knowing nothing.
Then we uncovered Umbrella’s horror show of an experiment.
Then we worked out the war between the men who founded the company.
And now we know about the massive conspiracy they’ve been brewing in the dark.” Ivan’s gaze hardened with resolve.
He raised his right arm, looked at Rebecca, then at Billy.
He closed his hand into a fist, and confidence filled his voice.
“Look back at how far we’ve already come.
That’s why I’ve got every reason to believe it — the road may twist, but the future is bright.” “Because that’s what we’ve lived, every step of the way.” That rich, resonant voice carried a surging vitality with it, and the pressure of that invisible hand scattered before it.
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