Resident Evil. Retribution by John Shirley Read Free Book Online

mandibles crunching through the bone of her skull. Darkness rose up, like the shadows from the depths of the sea, to swallow her alive…
    Alice opened her eyes.
    She was cold. She felt the chilly air on her bare legs. She was lying on a hard floor—a floor that seemed to glow.
    She sat up, moving with a crinkling sound. She was wearing a patient’s garment of thin paper cloth, and nothing else. Her head throbbed.
    She was sitting in a high-ceilinged cell, on a plexiglass surface. She had no shoes, no underwear. Light streamed up from below. The plexiglass formed a distinctive eight-sided shape—one she knew very well. It was the outline of the Umbrella Corporation logo.
    Becky.
    The memory was already fading.
    What had it been?
    A memory, a fantasy—a dream?
    She shook her head. It had seemed too real for any of that. But it couldn’t have been real. She had no husband. She had no daughter. And she didn’t have blond hair.
    She saw herself, a muted reflection in one of the glassy panels. She was a brunette.
    Alice sighed, and looked around the almost featureless chamber. The octagonal ceiling was at least forty feet above. The walls were glassy, streaming with light, and there was a window, about thirty feet up—well out of reach, now that Wesker had muted her powers.
    Flush with the wall across from her was a steel door. At least she assumed it was a door—though it had no hinges, no handle.
    She stood up and looked around.
    No way out.

6
    Alice moved over to the door-shaped rectangle in the wall, felt its edges, looked for a way to open it. A hidden panel, something—anything.
    Nothing.
    Abruptly, the cell lights switched off, plunging her into darkness. The air was charged with imminence— and after a moment, the smoked window, high in the wall over the door, lit up with a powerful light. In the window, now, was a familiar silhouette. Alice thought she recognized that shape.
    Jill Valentine?
    Her voice emanated from a speaker overhead.
    “Project Alice, who do you work for?” A pause, and then Jill continued, “Project Alice, why did you turn against Umbrella?”
    “Jill?” Alice called. “Is that you?”
    “Project Alice,” Jill repeated insistently, “Who do you work for ?”
    Alice ignored the question. She wasn’t in the mood for any “art of interrogation” psychodramas.
    “Where are Chris and Claire? Where are the others from the ship?” she demanded.
    And then Alice was punished. She was stabbed by sound.
    Squealing, hyper loud, painfully shrill feedback filled the room. It was beyond deafening, echoing back and forth between the walls as if it were hitting her face, over and over. Alice clapped her hands to cover her ears, but the shrieking noise only increased in pitch, in volume, passing unbearable and reaching what had to be near-lethal intensity.
    She hunkered down, putting her head between her knees, trying to block out the sound, wondering if she would come out of this with her hearing permanently damaged. It couldn’t get any worse than this, she thought desperately.
    It got worse.
    Louder, higher pitched yet…
    She writhed on the floor in agony, and then lost consciousness.
    Alice woke, finding that she had been moved, somehow, onto a cot. Her ears were still ringing from the sonic assault. Her stomach was roiling with nausea.
    The lights were brightly streaming up from the floor. The clinical glow seemed to say, “We are watching you, Alice. This is the light of pure observation.”
    The lights suddenly switched off. And even in darkness she felt eyes…
    And then the light in the window, Jill Valentine’s silhouette overhead.
    “Project Alice, who do you work for?”
    “Jill… what happened to you?” Alice asked hoarsely.
    “Project Alice, why did you turn against Umbrella?” Jill’s cold, impersonal voice reverberated around the octagonal chamber. “Why… why… did you turn…”
    “Jill—answer me! Why are you doing this?”
    And the punishment began again. The